


The Moth

by proprioception (sacrificethemtothesquid)



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Accidental Pregnancy, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canonical Character Death, F/M, I'm not gaming I'm doing research, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Past Abuse, Slow Burn, Unrequited Love, spoilers for absolutely everything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2018-12-23 05:22:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 88
Words: 242,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11983044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sacrificethemtothesquid/pseuds/proprioception
Summary: Moths seek out light, he thinks, and die for it. Maybe they know, but they still can’t stay away. He feels like that, a slow, inexorable urge to set himself on fire in the wild blaze of her hair.





	1. Chapter 1

The Moth don't care if The Flame is real,  
'Cause Flame and Moth got a sweetheart deal.  
And nothing fuels a good flirtation,  
Like Need and Anger and Desperation...

No, The Moth don't care if The Flame is real.

~ Aimee Mann

 

There are many things Erend doesn’t expect. Aloy is one of them.

He doesn’t expect Ersa to be murdered either, but here they are. Everyone is looking to him to lead because he’s the brother, the heir apparent, but he is incompetent and _shattered_ , and just this side of blind, stinking drunk. Ersa is dead and the earth is gone beneath his feet, and if he’s drunk, at least he has an excuse for why everything is sickeningly off-kilter. Everyone is looking at him to lead, but he _can’t_ \- of all the things he is, all the things he’s been told he has the potential to be, all the things Ersa always expected of him-

None of it matters. Not a bit. In the end, he isn’t Ersa, and he isn’t enough. He’s never been enough, and all he wants to do is crawl into the bottom of a bottle and let himself go bloated and white. He’s always had her to alternately prod and protect him, and in one horrible, brutal moment, she’s gone, and for the first time in his life, he has to fend for himself. He has to make decisions, not just for himself but for the fifty men under his command. There’s always been the comforting presence of Ersa’s influence at his back and now it’s _gone_. He feels naked and exposed, a brittle, untried blade with no protective scabbard.

How many times has he watched her step up and take command? He knows it’s a heavy burden to shoulder, but she looks at what needs to be done and she _does_ it without question. Himself, he’s been the muscle, the comic relief, the idiot brother completely content to follow her lead. She gives him a target, and he hits it like a hammer until it can't hit back. Now she’s dead, and everyone is looking to _him_ to step into her shoes because they assume she’s taught him everything she knows, and maybe she did, but his brain is too curdled and blank to remember.

He knows what Ersa would do, but the gap between what she’d do and what Erend is doing is a yawning chasm. He tries to stand firm, but he’s wavering. He tries to harden his voice with the strident tones of command, but it’s like singing a song whose notes he can’t hit. It comes off as pitiful and awkward, and everyone around him knows it. He’s led his men for three years now, and if that’s been fine, it’s because he’s had Ersa to fall back on.

The weight of his inadequacy is as crushing as Ersa’s death.

He’s standing at the guard tower, far too sober for this charade of competence but judging by the expressions on his fellow Vanguardsmen, still far too drunk. He wants to lash out, but their judgement is deserved, so he just swallows back his words and tries not to let them leak from his eyes. He’s only vaguely aware of the commotion at the gate until he hears the Carja captain’s rebuttal - “- a man in _grief_ -” and the words are oh so delicately balanced on the knife edge of sarcasm.

He isn’t Ersa, and it’s glaringly obvious. He isn’t Ersa. He isn’t Ersa, he isn’t _Ersa-_

Except...he recognizes the woman demanding entry. He knows that voice. It penetrates his stupor, and he lurches toward the gate. She’s there like the first flash of sunlight, and her name crawls into his mouth. “ _Aloy?_ ” He sounds like an idiot, his tongue thick and stupid, but he’s pushing past the others - _not professional, utterly incompetent, get it together_ \- and hammer to his bones, he feels like his chest has been blown open.

His fellow Vanguardsmen step aside, the barest frown on the Carja’s lips, but Erend doesn’t care. This bright Nora girl, the one that left him ringing like a blade on an anvil two months before, the one he’d been so sure was dead along with all the others-

Ersa’s voice is loud in his ears - _You talk too much. Stop playing around. Find your center, and make it your fortress_ \- but she’s dead and he’s not enough, and this is as unexpected as a second sunrise. The only thing holding him upright is the same smartass shit as always.

He babbles. There’s a spectrum between charming and sloppy, and he’s mired in the wrong end of it. Horrified, he can only watch as the words pour from his mouth. In the Embrace, he’d been a handsome soldier from a more cosmopolitan world, but he hadn’t impressed Aloy then; he can only imagine what she thinks as he spews useless slag at her, the alcohol heavy on his breath.

She wrinkles her nose and his heart crashes into his stomach. Before he can protest, he’s leading her to Olin’s house, the sharp sting of her disapproval clawing at his skin. He shouldn’t care. He should be more like Ersa and take control of the situation. He should assert his authority and protect his friend’s property and _not_ let this foreigner waltz into Olin’s private quarters.

He isn’t Ersa. He trails behind Aloy like a moth singed and dazed by its encounter with a flame.

He’s still processing that Aloy is _alive_ , alive despite all the awful news he’s heard from the Embrace. He’d heard the cry that shuddered through the Nora, the fierce, animal wail for a generation cut down in its prime. That sound cut deep into his gut. It was the worst sound he’d heard even during the Red Raids, and it shattered any hope he’d had for stealing a few quiet moments with a redheaded Nora brave after her Proving. He’d somberly left with Avad’s envoy, and quietly grieved for something that wasn’t his to mourn.

It’s been weeks, and suddenly that redheaded Nora brave is not only alive, she’s here on his doorstep, her eyes sharp and questioning. He half-wonders if he’s finally reached the point of alcoholism where he’s seeing things.

There are worse things to hallucinate. He’s been seeing the bloody pulp of Ersa’s face for _days_ , and even if Aloy isn’t real, she’s a welcome change.

So - he takes her to Olin’s house. He kicks in the door. He is good at being brute force, and he lets himself be used. He shouldn’t let Aloy dictate what he’s doing, but he’s been flailing for days as Captain-assumptive, and her purpose feels like a breath to a drowning man. She pushes a pallet from the second floor and crashes it into the basement, and fire and spit, Olin’s going to kill him.

Except - then Aloy hands him irrefutable proof that Olin is a traitor. Olin - _his friend_ \- is a traitor and murderer, and this unexpected Nora brave is staring at him expectantly, like she’s waiting for an answer to a question he hasn’t heard. He wants her to be wrong. He wants her to be a hallucination, a figment of his stupid, pickled brain, but if he isn’t sober, he’s at least awake, and he has no choice but to believe her. His legs go to water, and if he stays upright, it’s only because his armor is too stiff to let him fall.

If Olin’s a traitor, Erend should have known. He should have seen. Right?

_Incompetent._

Somehow, Aloy’s figured it out.

It’s hard to reconcile _that one pretty girl_ with the person standing in front of him. He’d been drinking a fair amount on that trip; he’s always drinking a fair amount, and maybe if he wasn’t, Ersa would have taken him with her, and maybe she’d still be alive. All he remembers is a startlingly pretty girl with a trinket in her ear and a wild mane of copper braids. If any of of the barmaids he’s known discovered they’d been targeted by a murderer with a magic jewel, they’d be messily sobbing with fear. If anything, Aloy looks more determined than ever. He doesn’t remember her being like this before her Proving, but she probably could have told him his head was on fire, and he wouldn’t have noticed. She’d been asking about Olin then, too, and instead of being helpful, he’d just run his mouth like a besotted idiot trying to win some of her time.

Incompetent. Inconsiderate. _Stupid._   

He’s drowning in himself, drowning in the churning river he’s made of himself, and desperately, selfishly, he grabs at the tool that doesn’t belong to him. He doesn’t have any leads on what happened to Ersa beyond the ambush. All he knows is that she was beaten beyond recognition, and when they’d showed him the body, he’d gone and puked for an hour. He can’t close his eyes without seeing her, even when he’s got more Oseram brew in his veins than blood. There is a hard crush of people looking to him for guidance, and like the asshole he is, he looks to Aloy.

He says he’s not begging, but he is. She has her own war to fight, but he presses hard, and he absolutely should _not_ feel as much relief as he does when she agrees to help. He’s shoving his own responsibility onto someone else yet again, letting someone else take the brunt of his duty, but he can’t _breathe_. He doesn’t care what it costs him. All he knows is that Aloy isn’t dead. She is in fact very much alive, and she’s tracking her would-be killers. Through the little trinket at her temple, she can see things that no one else can, and that is something he needs more than anything. He can’t take on the entire Shadow Carja by himself, but the specific ones who killed Ersa - he will take them straight to the depths of hell, and he needs Aloy to show him the way.

What Erend really needs, more than Aloy’s second sight, is for someone to point him in the right direction. Even if the white chips of Ersa’s pulped skull weren’t burned into the back of his eyelids, he’s never run a murder investigation. He’s never really run _anything_ , and the enormity is overwhelming.

They’re standing outside Olin’s house, Erend swaying in place like the flickering streetlamps. “I need to leave,” Aloy says.

“It’s late,” he protests. “Look -  stay at my place. If Olin’s people are really trying to kill you-”

“I can protect myself,” she snaps, and yes, she clearly can, but he's asking for himself, grasping at her warmth and desperately hoping she doesn’t notice. She's the first real thing he's seen in days, the first thing that's felt like heat and life, and he knows that if he can't stay in her light, he's going to fall back down into a bottle and let the shadows consume him. She’d praised him back in the Embrace after he’d talked down that raucous crowd, and the memory glows in his chest. He’d been competent then. He’d felt powerful and important, and then a gorgeous girl had stayed to talk.

He’s selfish, but he desperately wants that moment back, and he desperately wants her to give it to him.

“It's late,” he repeats. “I'll sleep on the floor, but just - stay.”

“Fine,” she says. “But I'm leaving at dawn.”

The men will talk, but he can't make himself care.

He barely sleeps. His habit has been to drink himself into a stupor and pretend like it’s sleep, but Aloy’s disgust at his appearance is palpable. He’s exhausted the stash he keeps in his room, but she’s spread her bedroll out on the foyer floor, and he can’t cross to the larder without her noticing. Instead, he trembles with shallow nightmares, caught in the grip of an inescapable dread and the gruesome smear of Ersa’s face. When he finally wakes up, drenched in sweat and shaking, Aloy is gone. The sky is barely light, and he has no claim on her.

He didn't think it was possible to feel more gutted, but like everything else in his life, he's wrong.

 

****

 

Erend honestly doesn’t expect Aloy to show up at Red Ridge Pass, not after how sloppy and demanding he’d been, but she _does_ , and it feels like air is flowing back in his lungs. She arrives just as he’s fending off a Grazer, and with one perfect shot, she fells the thing like she’s not even trying. She is resplendent despite her plain, uncomplicated Carja armor. It fits well - it fits _very_ well, and Erend tries not to stare - but it doesn’t suit her at all. The armor is too civilized, too constrained; it’s like taking a lightning storm and wrapping it in useless silks. He’s sure it’s more practical for the heat of the dusty Gatelands, but he misses the swaying knotted mesh layered over thick Nora furs.

Regardless of armor, Aloy is still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and his heart lodges itself in his throat at her approach. Maybe he isn’t as incompetent as he thinks, if he’s convinced her to come and she came-

“Are you sure you’re alright?” she asks.

He’s been on the road for two days and he didn’t bring a drop of alcohol with him. He’s shaking like he’s got a palsy, but his head is clear for the first time in weeks. “Well, I’m sober, so...no,” he says, and he doesn’t expect the deep sympathy that floods her face.

Briefly, he wonders if the Grazer didn’t kick him in the head, because it feels like the first time in weeks anyone has looked at him with something other than pity, and it makes his eyes burn.

The ambush site is three hours north. After the Grazer, they don’t see any other machines, and he’s starting to think that maybe he’s got a little bit of luck left when the wind kicks up, and the sand kicks up with it.

It would be a lie to say he’s used to the Gatelands - he’s Oseram born and bred in the chill of the Claim, and anything that’s not sharp crags and icy glacial runoff is too hot and too dry - but he’s fought here enough that he knows how to protect himself. He immediately pulls his scarf up around his face and does his best to turn against the wind. It’s going to be hell cleaning the dust out of his plates later, but this is relatively mild, and he doesn’t see any need to hunker down and ride it out.

Aloy takes one look at him, and wraps herself in her own scarf. He’s got to hand it to the Carja: their silks might be gaudy, but they’re tightly woven and good protection. “Is this normal?” she yells over the howling wind.

“Welcome to the Gatelands,” he shouts back.  

They fight their way through the dust storm. It’s not so bad that he loses the road, and just as they make it to the ambush site, the wind dies as suddenly as it came. He spits the grit from his mouth, and tries not to puke as they stand in the place where Ersa met her end.

Erend isn’t sure what he’d expected, but he can only watch in mute shock as Aloy eviscerates the ambush. Intellectually, he knows she’s relying heavily on her second sight, but he also knows that it’s one thing to _see_ and another to _understand_. He thinks that even if he had her little jewel, he could never draw the threads together the way she does. She takes a smear of blood and a few arrows, and turns a nightmare into a mystery. She doesn’t judge him for not seeing what she sees. She is frank and matter-of-fact and it blows him away.

They head up the trail, following cart tracks almost obliterated by the storm. He bobs behind her like a dazed turkey poult; he can’t stop his usual insipid bluster, because he’s scared and painfully sober and he doesn’t have anything else to fall back on. Aloy meets it and deflects it like she doesn’t even notice what he’s saying. He’s not sure what to make of that. He hasn’t gotten any indication it’s unwelcome, but he hasn’t gotten any indication that it’s _not_ unwelcome, and as she’s standing there amid the massacre-that-wasn’t, he realizes that he doesn’t know what to make of Aloy at all.

In the Embrace, he’d been blindsided by her, by the brightness of her like a cheery ember sprout amid a cold and gray landscape. “You don’t belong here,” he’d told her, because she _didn’t_ , but seeing her now, he’s sure she doesn’t belong in Meridian either. He’d thought she was pretty, and despite its heat and humidity and the ever-present glare of the sun, Meridian is the prettiest place he’s ever seen, so he’d assumed she’d want to be there. He’d thought she could calm the wild snarl of her hair and wrap herself in some delicate Carja silks, and he’d show her off through the streets. He’d be big and impressive, and maybe she’d let him kiss her. He really hadn’t given much thought beyond.

She is nothing like that. He has wildly misunderstood, and as she points out some faint ruts in the dust, he’s starting realize she has as much to teach him as Ersa ever did. He should have been paying attention all along, and now he absolutely has to double down and make up for lost time.

Her second sight leads them up a butte and right into an ambush of their own. The violence isn’t shocking; he’s been a big, solid piece of muscle his entire life, and he’s used to being hit. What knocks him on his ass is that it’s not the Shadow Carja lying in wait: It’s his own people, it’s the _Oseram_ , and even during the war, he never felt his body haze to red the way it does now. It’s bad enough that it’s his kin, but then the machines leap into the fray, and for one white-hot moment, he’s sure he’s about to be interred alongside his sister.

Except...Ersa didn’t have Aloy. Erend slams into cover right beside her, and as she pops up to execute three perfect headshots in a row, he distantly realizes he’s never actually _seen_ Aloy fight. He’s just assumed she could by the way she walks and her easy familiarity with the weapons she carries on her body. She'd somehow survived the massacre at the Proving - a massacre that was aimed directly at _her_ , if Olin’s papers are to be believed - and then shown up at the Meridian gate unscathed and utterly unexpected. He hadn’t had the presence of mind to question _how_ , and suddenly, he understands.

She is _breathtaking_.

His head is spinning, but the rush that comes from being by her side is like nothing he’s ever felt. He ducks under a charging Sawtooth, and swings his axe to knock the belly plate off its chassis. She’s there before he can take a breath, rolling in a single fluid movement and sinking her spear deep into the thing’s control center. It’s the perfect one-two punch, and it’s like a fucking _dance_ , beautiful and deadly. For the rest of the fight, he moves when she moves. They are the hammer and the anvil, the wheel and the water, the bellows and the forge.

As he takes the head off a Watcher, he suddenly thinks that maybe, he’s finally getting on his feet.

When it’s over, she quickly and methodically strips the machines for their parts. He stands back to catch his breath, still caught in the haze of a good, hard fight. When she’s done, she slips into the trance of the trinket, the tiny silver jewel somehow showing her things that he himself can’t see.

She finds straps that are cut. She finds a rock, thick with blood and matted hair. She finds fragments of stone.

“I have a theory,” she says.

He needs a direction, something, _anything_. He needs whatever she has, and he tries not to trip forward in his desperation. “Your theories are better than most people’s facts.”

Aloy lays it out for him. She threads the pieces together like he threads his own fingers on the pommel of his axe. The theory has weight and heft and a surprising strength despite the thin filaments of evidence, and it ignites him like spilled blaze.

He wants to ask her to come back with him to Meridian, to share in the glory of her discovery and help him find Ersa if the body in the tomb is not his sister, but he can’t even ask. Aloy is already retrieving the best of her arrows for reuse and eyeing the sun for her journey elsewhere. He wants her to come with him. He wants to run with her by his side. He wants to feel the way he felt during the fight, the two of them moving like two lungs in the same body, the swing and the deflection-

She won’t. She’s already given him more than he deserves. He might be Ersa’s idiot brother, the worthless drunk, but this is the direction he’s needed. Aloy is leaving, but Ersa might be alive and Erend is going to find her.


	2. Chapter 2

The body in Ersa’s tomb is not hers.

The Carja have a saying: follow the shadow and you’ll find the flame. Ersa’s apparent death had plunged him into his darkest depths, but now Erend has a direction. Now he has hope, and he feels like a beacon, exploding with bright, violent purpose. Ersa might still be alive, and his singular goal is to find her. He pores over maps until late in the night. He talks to traders, to scouts, to anyone who might have half a breath of information. He becomes a missile, an arrow, a dedicated body speeding toward a single point. His sister’s second in command is a sour-faced old warrior named Adar, and he’s regarded Erend with an expression of faintly pained disgust even before Ersa’s apparent murder, and it’s only deepened since; one of these days, Erend will bring Adar around, but right now, he has no time. He’d stumbled hard trying to fill Ersa’s shoes, but just like Aloy had said he would, he’s found his footing and he’s starting to run. His job is to find his sister and return her to her rightful place as captain of the Vanguard. Nothing else matters.

He'd honestly thought he'd never make it, but maybe Aloy’s jewel has more magic than second sight.

Aloy. He doesn’t know if Aloy will come back to Meridian. He’d asked, but she’s out chasing down Olin, that bastard. She has her own agenda, and he’s beginning to realize whatever scant few moments he’s been granted were more than she could comfortably spare.

It’s a realization both heady and terrifying.

In rare moments of hubris-driven daydreaming, he thinks maybe he could protect her if she came back. If she’d stayed with him and the murderers tracked her down, he could swing his axe and neatly sever their heads. She’d be free to come and go as she pleased...but then he remembers the gut-wrenching wail of Nora grief, and he feels sick himself. He hadn’t seen Olin’s duplicity when he’d been standing right beside him; Erend is a wall of muscle and bone, not a tactician, and he clearly doesn’t have a brain for strategy. He’d only slow her down if he tries to go with her. The one thing he can do is pursue the leads she’d given him, and try not to linger near the city gates.

She comes back like summer storm, boiling up from nowhere, and when he’s called to the Sun King’s side, he almost grins like an idiot when he sees her standing there. He absolutely does not deserve the sparkling smile she offers at his arrival, but he snatches at it anyway like a covetous child, and tucks it away in his chest.  

While Erend doesn’t much care for Blameless Marad - he prefers an enemy he can hit, one he can see - he can accept the man has his uses, and the spymaster proves his worth. There’s enough evidence to suggest a new direction, and a known enemy. Erend has a target and a destination. He doesn’t want to ask Aloy if she’ll come along, and for once, he’s okay with someone else doing the asking for him. Avad’s invitation is neatly worded and layered with flattery, and of course Aloy accepts.

When the formalities are over, Erend lingers. He’s been running their last encounters over and over in his mind, searching for evidence that he wasn’t crazy, that she did want to help him, that maybe she _liked_ him. In his darker moments, he tries not to remember the way she’d frowned at him, the way she’d scrutinized his face when she asked if he was sober.

He wants to ask how she’s been. He wants to sit her down with a mug of ale and listen to whatever she wants to tell him. He wants to tell her that he hasn’t been drinking nearly as much, and he wants to see the way her face glows with approval. There’s a new little scar by her eyebrow, and she’s pink with sun. He doesn’t know how he hasn’t noticed the warm spatter of her freckles before, and he is _delighted_ at the discovery.

Over the last few weeks, she’s occupied the cracks in his mind not consumed by Ersa, but seeing her in person is like the first taste of sweet, cool water on a blistering summer day.

“The Broadhorns outside of town,” she says by way of greeting. “How long have they been attacking travellers?”

He shrugs. “The Carja patrols usually take care of them. Why? Did you have trouble?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

Fire and spit, it’s good to see her. He’s burning to get to Pitchcliff, but if Aloy is by his side, it will almost be _fun_.

But, of course, she has her own path. “I’ll meet you on the road,” she says.

He’s such an asshole. “What, like you’ve got better things to do?”

The smirk he’s hoping for never comes. She just shakes her head. “Something I have to look into. It’s not far. I’ll be there.”

Erend is the temporary captain of the Sun King’s Vanguard, and he is absolutely not crushed by her refusal. _Please come with us the whole way,_ he wants to say. _It’ll be safer if you’re with us. It’ll be easier if you’re with us. This is incredibly important and I’m terrified of what we’ll find, and I knew I missed you but I didn’t realize how much until you walked in._

Instead, he feels his lips twitch. “Don’t stand me up in Pitchcliff. Ersa needs us.”

Idiot.

 

****

 

They agree to meet on the road to Pitchcliff in five days.

Aloy nods. “I'll be there.”

She isn't.

Erend and his men are a day late themselves, having first run afoul of a pair of Longlegs tottering too close to the road, and then an abnormally large herd of Grazers. His men had come out relatively unscathed, but good scrap is good scrap, and they'd lost time salvaging what they could.

“She should be here,” Erend says, when they arrive at an empty camp. “We're the ones late. She should already be here.”

“She seems to be adept at taking care of herself,” Adar, his sister’s second, points out.  

It doesn't stop Erend from fretting.

Besides himself and Adar, there are five other Vanguardsmen in the party. They are all of them full of fire and steel and ready for vengeance. He’s known most of them since before the war, and he’s lead them into battle under Ersa’s command. He trusts them, even if he doesn’t trust himself.

By the forge, he hopes there’s more in Pitchcliff than rotting bones. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Marad’s agent doesn’t meet them. He doesn’t have any lead other than Dervahl, and he needs Ersa back, badly. He’s holding everything together, but just barely; he feels like a poorly forged blade, bent almost to shattering.

He needs Ersa, and he needs Aloy. He's working himself up like an overheated forge when she stumbles like a Stalker out of the darkness, scaring the piss out of the man on watch. There's a deep gash on her forehead and ragged burns on her sleeves.

“Aloy!” He’s on his feet and around the fire before he can stop himself. “Fire and spit, are you alright?”

“Bellowbacks,” she says conversationally.

“ _Bellowbacks,_ ” he repeats. “As in...plural?”

“Three,” she confirms, and crumples into a heap.

She needs sleep and soup and a few quiet moments to patch up her gear. She seems utterly nonplussed by the whole situation, and somehow _that_ is more nerve-shattering than the blood on her face. She needs a few hours to recharge, and by midmorning, she's packed up and ready to head out, three new machine hearts clinking in her pouch.

Erend needs about ten drinks and a week in a dark bar.

Ersa, he thinks, will _love_ Aloy.

 

****

 

Most of the area south of Pitchcliff isn’t well-mapped. Before they head out, he consults with Adar and Aloy.

“This area used to be easily passable,” his sister’s second says. “But that was ten years ago.”

Erend looks at Aloy. She shrugs helplessly. “Don’t look at me. I’ve never been this far north.”

It’s so easy to forget how much she doesn’t know. _Inconsiderate._  He’s so used to the Carja wandering freely and the Oseram grudging acceptance of the Sundom that he never remembers it’s different for her. The Nora don’t go beyond their own borders out of steel-bound custom, but here she is, and he hasn’t worked up the nerve to ask how she’s managed that. The only way in or out of the Embrace is through a heavy Nora gate, and not even Aloy could have snuck past those guards.

He knows she grew up outcast. He hopes she hasn’t been outcast twice.  

They’ve got a direction, and a vague sense of the road, so they head out. He’s been to Pitchcliff a dozen times in his life, but the heavy machine presence means there can’t be regular trading routes in these parts. Consequently, the maps are abysmal. The party is half a day up the river only to find the bridge is washed out, and they have to backtrack around a well-established Shell-walker trail. Their bad luck only increases: the map indicates there’s a possible campsite further north, and Aloy goes to scout. She comes back wide-eyed and pale, and offers only a single word: “Corrupted.”

Adar nods soberly, and inscribes a glyph on the map. “Could you tell how much?”

She shakes her head, and sinks down by the fire. “We have to go around.”

There’s general muttering. “Around?” Tandin squeaks. “That’s almost a _week-”_

“We go,” she says through clenched teeth, “ _around.”_ Erend watches her trap her hands between her knees, and he realizes she’s trembling.

“Hey,” he says quietly. “You okay?”

Her eyes flash in the darkness. “Go where you want,” she snaps. “I’m going around.”

She’d taken down three Bellowbacks and slept it off. He doesn’t want to think about the things that scare her.

Even on good nights, she doesn’t camp with the rest of them. Erend hasn’t figured out if it’s a Nora thing or an Aloy thing, or if she hasn’t decided whether or not any of her travelling companions are a threat. If it’s the latter, he doesn’t blame her. He’s lived through the Red Raids and the bloody coup that followed. He’s painfully aware of the dark impulses that live inside the human soul.

He wants to tell Aloy he’s not like that. He wants to tell her none of his men are, that Ersa hand-picked every single one of them, and that as the Vanguard, their duty above all else is to protect. He wants to tell her she’s safe. He wants her to sit in the campfire’s soft glow and tell her own stories of the road.  

 _You belong here_ , he wants to say, but he knows she doesn’t. She’s too wild, too feral, and he’s torn between wanting to draw her in and wanting to go out and join her.

Tonight, she takes her bedroll deep into the tall grass, scattering glowbugs as she goes. When she lays down, even if he’s looking right at the place he knows she is, he can’t see her.

It isn’t something he’s ever been taught, but he instantly understands what it means. He waves an arm at the men. “Douse the fire. Take your stuff and get in the grass.”

“Sleep in the weeds?” Kip whines.

“Do it,” Erend says. “Unless you want to be a Sawtooth snack.”

“Oseram don’t hide,” mutters Tandin. “I’m no rusting coward.”

“Do I have to repeat myself?” Erend says. “We can’t help Ersa if we’re all dead.”

That shuts them up.

As he’s laying there in the darkness, the pinprick glowbugs lazily dancing above him, he wonders what else Aloy can teach him. She’s not going to tell him when he’s supposed to be paying attention; she won’t cuff him over the head like Ersa always did. He’s going to have to watch her as much as he can.

He’s already watching he more than he should, but he’s been mesmerized by the sway of her hips and the strong lines of her shoulders. He needs to be paying attention to the _reasons_ behind her movements, instead of mooning like a lovestruck boy.

 _Incompetent_. _Stupid._

He’s never been much of a scholar, but suddenly he feels like this is a test. Every single thing he should know is being thrown at him all at once, and for the first time in his life, he can’t grin and bluster and charm his way out. There isn’t anyone else to fall back on. There aren’t any other options. If he fucks this up, Ersa _dies_ , and fire and spit, he wants a drink so very, very badly.

 

****

 

The next day, they’re edging around a low butte when Aloy holds up a hand. “Snapmaws,” she says tightly. “And two Sawtooths.”

“Hit ‘em til they can’t hit back!” someone pipes up from the rear.

“Idiot,” Erend snaps, and turns back to Aloy. “What’s the plan?”

“Give me a minute,” she says, and disappears into the grass.

Not three minutes later, he hears the enraged snarl of a Sawtooth, and watches in horrified fascination as the machine bounds down the butte and takes a chunk out of the lead Snapmaw. He holds the men back while the machines tear at each other, and a few minutes later, a second Sawtooth leaps into the fray.

Aloy slides down the rockface into the group. “We’ve got about seven minutes,” she says breathlessly. “Stay back if you can.” Then she’s gone again.

The Sawtooths dispatch the Snapmaws with only minimal damage, and stalk back to their patrols on the butte. Erend can’t see it, but he hears the metal pop of a dying machine, and a moment later, a second one.

“We’re clear,” Aloy calls out. .

He dispatches the men to salvage the pieces, and jogs around the boulders to catch up with her. “...how did you do that? Was that with your little jewel-thing?”

She shakes her head. “My staff. I can...override them. It makes them like us, for a few minutes. They’ll attack other machines.”

He whistles. “So they’re on our side? For how long?”

She shrugs. “I’ve overridden a Strider for a few hours. The bigger ones don’t last that long. I can keep a Watcher overridden for fifteen minutes, a Sawtooth maybe eight. But I’m getting better.”

“Why’d you kill them, if they’re on our side?”

“I can’t keep them overridden forever,” she says quietly. “And they help, so...I feel like they deserve a merciful death.”

 

****

 

It’s late afternoon when she stops them again.

“Ravagers,” she says. “If you stay on the road, you should be fine. I’ll make sure they don’t come anywhere near.”

“What about you?”

“I’m faster on my own.”

She keeps saying that. “Yeah, well. There’s strength in numbers, too.”

One eyebrow twitches. “Have _you_ ever fought a Ravager?”

He shifts on his feet. “Well...no. But there’s enough of us.”

“There’s never enough,” Aloy says, and palms the potion vials at her waist as if taking inventory. They’ve been on the road long enough that all their supplies are running low, but they’re still four days from Pitchcliff, if the rusting maps can be believed. “I’m faster and I can stick to the trees.”

She darts off into the bushes. Within minutes, there’s a hard whine of a machine powering up to full alert, and the ground-shaking rumble of the beasts as they crash through the underbrush toward wherever she’s set up her trap.

Erend keeps his men moving down the road. There are distant sounds of battle, but she’d said to keep moving, and he _trusts_ her in this; he doesn’t have the option not to. An Oseram fighter is protected by thick layers of leather and metal. The Nora aren’t smiths, at least not with any skill, and in his experience, they’ve compensated with guerrilla tactics: traps and bombs and sniping from hidden positions high in trees or on cliffs. His instinct is to bludgeon the machines to death because that’s how he knows how to fight, but he’s also seen ten men mown down by a Ravager’s rapid-fire projectiles, and if Aloy knows a better way…

Then again, he remembers five nights before, when she’d staggered into camp with blood on her face, and he doesn’t know what’s worse, a Bellowback or a Ravager, and he doesn’t want to find out. He doesn’t want _her_ to find out. She’s helped him get this far, and he’s trying very hard not to cling to her competence as a substitute for his own.

Not when she’s got her own nebulous journey. She hasn’t spoken of it; she’s only mentioned in passing that after Pitchcliff, she’s heading west. He’d asked if she’d found Olin yet, and she’d given a vague answer about cultists and the dig site.

He wonders if she won’t tell him because Olin is dead, and she doesn’t want to be the one to let Erend know.

The shadows are growing long by the time she catches up with them again. He gives her a questioning glance, and she responds with a quick shake of her head that could mean anything. “The Ravagers?” he presses.

“Not a problem.”

He doesn’t know if that mean they weren’t a problem for _her_ , or if they’re not a problem _now_ , but she’s dropped back into her jewel’s trance, and he swallows back a stab of irritation. She doesn’t say anything when they stop for the night, and without asking, she’s scrambling up a nearby escarpment to perch huddled in her furs and keep watch.

He wants to talk to her. He wants her to talk to him. He wants to crawl up there with her and stare into the dark sky, the heat radiating from her shoulder into his own. He wants her to explain what she’s looking for. He wants to hear how she survived the massacre at her Proving. He wants to ask her how the Nora chart the stars and how they learn to climb trees and cliffs with the same ease as walking on the ground. He wants to ask how she grew up outcast. It’s unfathomable that anyone could look at her and decide to send her away.

He wants to watch her face as she scans the horizon for the subtle glow of machine heads. He wants to hear the breath in her lungs, the vital action that keep her alive and whole.

Sometimes, it feels like that day at the gate, he’d been a newly-hatched gosling, stumbling around in a world too harsh and too bright. He feels like maybe he’s imprinted on her, and it’s so wholly inappropriate it burns in his chest. She’s not beholden to him. Every minute she lingers in his presence is one minute more he’s taking away from her journey. Every machine she kills to protect their convoy is one more debt he owes her. When they find Ersa, when they find her alive...Erend cannot comprehend how much he’ll owe Aloy. It’s more than a life debt. It’s more than the debt of two lives.

He wonders if Aloy can smell the obsession in his sweat. Ersa had rejected Dervahl a dozen times, each one with an increasing sense of frustration. She hadn’t avoided Dervahl exactly - not once in her life has Ersa avoided confrontation - but Erend saw how her annoyance colored her interactions with everyone else for days.

He doesn’t want Aloy’s hand. He hasn’t let himself even think about wanting her body. He just knows that when she jogs ahead to scout around the bend, all the sun leaves the world, and he feels like he’d do anything to get it back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started out as a one-shot because I was innocently wandering around and this ship fucking hit me square in the feels. I'm still working on my first playthrough so I have no idea where this is going, but hey, I didn't have anything else going on. This is fine. This is _fine_.
> 
> Tags will be updated as soon as I figure out what the hell is going on.


	3. Chapter 3

Ersa dies anyway.

 

****

 

_Your king needs you. No more playing around. You’re gonna have to grow up fast._

_You damn well better_.

 

****

 

He can’t make himself leave, not just yet. Distantly, he hears Aloy digging through Dervahl’s workshop, the rustling of pages and the tinny cascade of a child’s bottled laughter. He doesn’t remember telling Aloy to leave. He doesn’t remember that she doesn’t. Later, the others will tentatively tell him he sat with Ersa for hours, unmoving, and then they’ll tell him Aloy curled into the corner like a shadow, a silent witness to his pain.  

“Come on, son,” Adar says quietly. “You’ll freeze to death up here.”

He doesn’t feel anything. The camp is utterly quiet, and when he can’t bring himself to move from his place by the fire, Aloy breaks the silence and gently guides him to bed. He collapses into the bedroll fully clothed, and after a moment’s hesitation, she settles in beside him.

“Erend...I’m so sorry,” she says, and her voice is painfully small and sad.

There’s less than a breath of distance between them. It should be thrilling to have her this close, to be lying in bed with her, face to face and enveloped in her musky, herbal warmth. His entire body should be shrilling with the proximity, but it isn’t. He’s just...numb.  

She’s lost someone too. She hasn’t said who, or when. He thinks about the Proving, how she’d survived when almost none of the others had, an entire generation of Nora cut down. It should have made her hard and bitter, but instead, she’s here, holding herself like she’s somewhere she doesn’t know how to be.

“You don’t have to stay,” he mumbles, because she looks painfully uncomfortable, and fire and spit, is he that pathetic that she’s forcing herself to watch over him?

She swallows visibly. “I...want to.”

“Do you?” He doesn’t mean for it to come out so harsh and rough, but it’s easier to be angry at her than confront her charity.

Aloy shrinks back a bit, and it’s like watching a flame almost drown in its own wax. “If you’d rather…?”

He wouldn’t rather. He doesn’t know. He feels like he’s been hit with the paralyzing sound that killed Ersa, every muscle gone slack and dead. He isn’t alive. He’s just meat on bone, a corpse that doesn’t know it’s supposed to rot. There’s a crushing weight in his chest, his lungs thick and hot, like he’s opened a forge and taken a deep, killing breath. He wants to be pouring ale down his throat. He wants the warm, buzzing lassitude as his brain disconnects from everything below.

He wants to drink until he can’t see anymore, and then he wants to keep going, but he’s already gone through the small flask in his bag. It didn’t feel like anything, just the barest taste of bitter water, and he’d have to go back down the mountain to Pitchcliff to get more. He’s not sure he won’t just walk off the edge of the path if he tries.

Aloy is still watching him, her eyes moss-brown and flicking across his face. She’s so feral, he thinks distantly. He wonders if anyone has ever sat with her this way. He wants to ask. He needs to know about her beloved dead, who this person was that makes Aloy willing to stand and face Erend’s grief along with her own. A sibling? A lover? But his throat is welded shut and the words don't come.

Ersa would know how to ask-

Ersa _can’t_ -

He’s vaguely mortified as the burning in his eyes starts to spill over.

Erend has seen Aloy approach a charging machine with more confidence, but she still reaches over, a jerky, halting movement as her hand settles tentatively on the side of his head. Her fingers are cold.

She looks as jarred by the contact as he is, but then she clenches her jaw and sinks her fingers into the thick mess of his hair. The pressure is strangely grounding, and she’s _touching_ him, and he’s so undone he can only stare at her with flooded eyes.

“Is this okay?” she whispers.

Nothing is okay. Nothing’s been okay for weeks and nothing is ever going to be okay again, but Aloy’s face is right across from his, the warmth of her breath on his cheeks. Her fingers card through his hair, a firm, hypnotizing movement, and he lets himself lean into her hand.

 

****

 

He doesn’t sleep, not really. It’s just shadow on a wall, dark flickers of the bloody pulp of Not-Ersa and the gray, slack horror as his sister’s eyes rolled back in her head. He twitches awake, gasping, but Ersa is still dead, _she’s still dead_ -

_You’re gonna have to grow up fast._

He doesn’t want this. He’s never wanted this.

 _No more playing around_.

This was always Ersa’s cause, Ersa’s army. She’s the one who held the Oseram in one hand and Avad in the other. She’s the one the ealdormen look to for wisdom. She’s the one Marad consults on matters of significance. She’s the one Avad listens to above all others-

Erend is none of that. He’s never been any of that. He doesn’t know _how,_  and when he starts to think of everything he somehow has to learn, his body short-circuits like a wounded Scrapper and he wants to throw up.  

 

****

 

Sometime around dawn, he feels Aloy slip away. The camp is quiet, the one or two men awake moving slowly as they boil water for their tea.

“I’m going to Meridian,” he hears her say, her voice hushed in the early-morning stillness. “I’ll try and make sure the roads are clear.”

“Do what you need to do,” Adar responds. “We’ve got the maps. We have to stop back in Pitchcliff first, but we’ll be right behind you.”

There’s a pause, and he can almost see her pursing her lips, chewing around the question she’s not sure she should ask. “If he...you’ll watch out for him, won’t you?”

Ersa’s second hums. “I always do.”

 

****

 

Erend wants to set out for Meridian immediately, to feel the sharp impact of steel-toed boots on the hard, stony soil, but runners from the valley report a storm on the way. There’s a sober acceptance among his men; they’re glad to be back among Oseram, but Ersa’s body is lying in an unheated hut nearby, her murderer unpunished. It’s early in the year for the winds to be this high, but it’s been unseasonably hot in Meridian, so maybe this is to be expected.

He’s still set to _try_ , but then Adar gives him a hard look, and fire and spit, his sister’s second is right. If the blizzard doesn’t kill him outright, the machines he can’t see _will_.

He’s stuck in Pitchcliff with the entire town looking to him for guidance.

Ersa isn’t coming back to be the captain of the Vanguard. Erend had thought he was managing well enough keeping her boots warm, but suddenly, they’re _his_ boots, and if it was a shock the first time, now it’s bitter and cold and he’s choking on helpless, furious terror.

He hears the whispers in the village. He’s drunk, not deaf, and the unease that follows him crawls in his bones like ice. The storm will blow over in a couple of days, and in the meantime, he does not intend to be conscious. He’s been given a room behind the tavern, a perfect place for an incompetent drunk, and he doesn’t have the heart to fight it.

He’s settled in for the night and is well into fortifying his bunker when Kip bursts through the door. “Cap, the bird’s down,” he gasps. “Scouts just came in.”

Erend blinks. “...what now?”

“The Stormbird,” Kip repeats. “Twenty minutes ago. Dropped out of the sky.”

According to the guards at the Pitchcliff main gate, the machine’s been circling on the far edge of valley for weeks. The hunters have been preoccupied with the Glinthawks that keep harrying the road, so the Stormbird hasn’t been a priority; it doesn’t attack unless anyone comes too close, and since its flight path is largely over land that’s already been logged, casualties have been light. There isn’t a hunter for a hundred miles that would take on a machine that size, not when it’s minding its own business, but-

Aloy.

He doesn’t know how he knows, but hammer to steel, he _knows_.

He isn’t as drunk as he wants to be, but he’s definitely too drunk to be on his feet. He’s too drunk to be slapping on his armor and cinching the straps, and he’s too drunk to be staggering out into the storm to do exactly what he’s going to do. “I’ll scramble the boys,” Kip offers, but Erend just shoves his tankard at the soldier’s chest.

“Drink.” If she’s out there, she’s probably got it handled, but all he can think of is the sheet of blood on her face as she stumbled into camp, and he _cannot_ lose both her and Ersa in a single week. Erend is the captain, and logically, he should be delegating, sending Kip or Tandin or any of the others, but the terrified look in Kip’s eyes confirms his decision. No one is prepared to battle a Stormbird, but Erend is just drunk enough to try. “If I’m not back by midday, you take the others and you go to Meridian as soon as the storm breaks. Tell Avad and _stop Dervahl_.”

Kip nods about a dozen times. His hands shake as he helps with the final pauldron laces.

This isn’t what Ersa had told him to do - _your king needs you_ \- but Erend owes Aloy, and a Stormbird isn’t a small thing. Even if she does manage to bring it down, the wind is starting to howl, and she’s a little Nora far outside of the Embrace. There are storms, and then there are storms in the Claim, and no one but an idiot goes out in one.

Erend has a lifetime of experience being an idiot.

The climb up the mountain would be harrowing, if not for the lazy warmth of the ale in his blood. _Don’t be dead_ , he thinks. _I don’t care what it costs me. Just please, please,_ please _don’t be dead_.

He sees the glow of the fire before anything else. The bird’s not quite gone, but it’s on the ground, broken and smoldering. It hisses at his approach, and the pipes in its neck gurgle as it tries to pump chillwater from the pierced canisters on its wings. Its heart is hanging on by a few sparking wires. He doesn’t see Aloy anywhere, so he takes a deep breath of icy air and brings his axe down hard on the thing’s spine. Energy arcs and snaps, and the beast finally dies; she’d done the hard work of bringing it down, and all he has to do is strike the killing blow. With clumsy fingers, he pulls out the heart and drops it in the pouch at his waist.

When it’s done, he staggers back from the corpse and looks around. The wind is whistling through the machine’s struts, the blowing snow starting to extinguish the fires tucked in its terrifying architecture. The afternoon’s gotten as cold as a dead man’s anvil, the sky gone diffuse and gray. In an hour, the entire world will be a single, roiling white, and he won’t have any hope of finding the road back.

She has to be here somewhere. She has to-

He sees her hair before anything else, a brief flicker of rust amid the dimming flame from the Stormbird. She’s curled in on herself behind a fallen log, and he drops to his knees beside her.

She’s still breathing, but blue energy skitters across her body, and when he reaches for her, it snaps across the distance and every muscle in his arm contracts as one, a sudden, painful crush. Gritting his teeth, he pushes the hair back from her face. There’s a dark dribble of shock wax essence on her chin, but the vials at her waist are all empty. He grabs at his own belt and lifts her head, pouring another dose into her mouth.

“...cold,” she manages, coughing around the potion.

“Stay with me,” he says desperately. “Please, please stay with me.”

Ersa died in his arms, and Aloy is twice as pale and bloodied-

He doesn't throw up. He slings her over his shoulder and starts the long, hard trudge back to Pitchcliff.

He makes it there just as the full force of the storm hits. Kip and the others are waiting behind the gates, Adar’s face a blaze of anger that evaporates instantly when he sees Aloy.

“Alive,” Erend manages, and then his knees give out.

There are so many refugees from the storm and the healers are still overwhelmed from the Glinthawk attacks that in the end, he volunteers his own bed. Thankfully, she’s escaped frostbite, but she’s still twitching and shaking, quick little tremors that spark faintly blue. He holds another dose of shock wax to her lips, and stokes the fire and buries her in furs. There’s nothing left to do but wait, so he collapses back into a chair.

He drinks.

He’s angry. He’s angry at Ersa for going off without him, and angry at Aloy for doing the same. He’s angry at himself for being the sort of person who gets left behind, and he’s angry that he didn’t notice he was that sort of person in the first place. He’s angry at Dervahl for being a murdering bung, and he’s angry at the world for having deadly machines that get meaner and meaner every year. He’s exhausted from his trek to the Stormbird site. He was drunk before he left, and was just skirting the nauseous edge of sobriety as he staggered through the gates. Now he’s hungover _and_ drunk.

Incompetent. Stupid.  

He drinks.

Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, Aloy rolls over in bed and blinks at him in vague surprise. “Why are you here?”

“Why are _you_?” he snaps, but then he’s scrubbing a hand at his face as he crumples back into grief. He doesn’t want to need her. He doesn’t want to be bewitched by this stupid, stubborn Nora who doesn’t listen and doesn’t plan, and doesn’t seem to care that he craves her attention the same way he craves the drink in his hand.

“No...why’re you _here_?” Her words are slurred almost as badly as his own, and there’s a persistent tremble in her hand as she reaches for him. “How’d you get…?”

“I followed you,” he says, and then his fingers are wrapped around her own. “I fucking _followed_ you.”

“ _Why_?” she asks again, and there’s a fragile hitch in her voice.

He’s very, very drunk and so very, very sad. He just wants to bury his face in her furs and cry until there’s nothing left. “You would have gotten yourself killed,” he rasps. “They’d’ve found your bones in the spring, and not even known they were yours.”

Her hand twitches.

“Ersa…I couldn’t...” He can’t even say it. “Don’t make me lose you, too.”

The shock wax is finally taking effect, and he feels the clenching little tremors in her hand start to relax. He’s not sure how much of the stuff a body can take, or if he should be concerned that her pupils are so wide and dark.

“Why’d you do it?” he asks quietly. “Why’d you go?”

_Why didn’t you take someone?_

She frowns. “Faster on my own.”

“Faster doesn’t take down a Stormbird.”

“It did.”

It _didn’t_ , he almost shouts, but he’s so drunk his lungs aren’t really responding. They sit in his chest like heavy skins of water, and if he coughs he’s going to be sick.

“Should’ve taken someone,” Erend finally says. “Anyone.”

She blinks at him slowly. “...who’d go with me?”

He almost pukes on his boots.

Aloy doesn’t even see him. She’s looking at him like he’s asked the most idiotic question, and he’s _serious_ , he’s _offering_ _himself_ , and it’s not even registering. He is so incompetent that she cannot even comprehend his help _meaning_ anything.

Ersa is dead, everyone is looking to him to lead, and he’s such a useless drunk that it hasn’t even _occurred_ to Aloy that he might provide a bit of cover.

He should just go throw himself off a cliff, except he’s too drunk to walk, and he'd probably miss the edge anyway.

He's also too drunk not to keep crashing forward. He's a Charger in a room of fragile pottery, too big to back out and too stupid to slow down. “ _I_ would,” he says plaintively, and just narrowly avoids adding, _anytime, anywhere. Tell me where to go and I’ll go._

Something happens to her breath, like the first hitch of a sneeze. “... _why_?” The word is so small and quiet it’s almost lost in the blankets.

“You know why,” Erend says, but she gives him a look of complete hopelessness, and he realizes, no. She really, truly doesn’t.

It’s the same conversation they’d had back in the Embrace. He’d put on his best swagger and started into his ladykiller flattery, and she just...hadn’t gotten it. He’d thought she was being obstinate, but the more time he spends with her, the more he realizes she truly doesn’t see.

Ersa is _dead_ , and Aloy is lying here utterly unaware of her own worth, and Erend is both way too drunk and not drunk enough for the anvil-crush of emotion in his chest. Even if he were sober, he’s not the sort of man who has the vocabulary to explain. He’s brute force. He’s dumb muscle. He absolutely does not have the capacity to finesse a situation like Ersa did. He doesn’t have the drive to fix things the way Ersa did. He doesn’t have any drive at all, and _that’s the problem_. Left on his own, he will drink until he can’t see straight, because he’s his father’s son and he will never be anything more.

 _Follow the shadow and you’ll find the flame_. Aloy is light. Aloy is a fire he can’t stay away from, the single glowing coal that makes him almost feel like he’s not a complete failure. He doesn’t know why. He just knows that when she goes around a bend in the road, his heart lodges in his throat until she comes back. He just knows that if he knocks the belly plate off a Sawtooth, she’s ready with an arrow, and setting her up for a kill like that feels like something he’s born to do. 

She’d laid down next to him and put her hand in his hair. Even in the depths of his grief, it felt like a benediction.

Now, there are shadows under her eyes, and a faint purple stain on her lips from the shock wax potion. Her endearing freckles are sharp and bright, like flying sparks against a pale sky. By the forge, he might be a big, useless drunk, but maybe he can throw his weight behind her and maybe, just maybe, provide some cover.

That is, if he doesn't trip her in the process.

All of a sudden, his body is a huge, ponderous weight, and he’s so tired he can barely breathe. “You should get some rest,” he says, and the last thing he remembers is Aloy’s cold fingers on his neck as he slumps out of the chair.

 

****

 

He wakes up on the floor with a pounding head and the taste rancid boot in his mouth. He lurches up to puke in the hearth, and then collapses onto the bed. She’s already gone, because of course she is, but if he presses his face into the pillow, he can almost smell the dark, musky warmth of her skin beneath the pungent tang of shock wax.


	4. Chapter 4

These last few weeks, Erend has been living under the assumption that Ersa will come back and take her place as the captain of the Vanguard. He’s been grabbing at hope like a drowning man, but suddenly, she's not, and it’s a nauseating lurch like he’s falling off a cliff. This isn’t something that will change. This is the cold, hard truth, awful and irrevocable, and the panic is so crushing he can barely breathe.

“Captain,” Adar says, quiet in his own grief, and Erend feels the world haze to gray.

_You're gonna have to grow up fast._

He is very almost not drunk, and he wants to die. He spends a lot of time gripping things so no one sees that his hands are shaking. His head pounds like a hammer on an anvil, and if he spends less time talking, it’s because if he opens his mouth there’s a good chance he’ll puke. The journey back to Meridian is a long, painful slog. There are fewer machines, but he can’t be grateful, not when Ersa is dead - Ersa is _dead_ \- and Aloy’s absence burns in his gut.

What he really, really wants to do is give up. He isn’t built for this. He’s a different sort of steel. Ersa could flex and bend; he’s thick plates, heavy and dull. He wants someone else to take over. He wants to go back to being a blunt force carrying out someone else’s orders. He’d liked that. He’d been good at it. He’s big enough that intimidation came easily, but he’d much preferred being the charming, hard-drinking sort of lout that everyone could share a cup with.

 _No more playing around_.

It isn’t fair. He doesn’t want to be Ersa’s heir. It’s too much for his brain to handle. Everyone from Avad on down is assuming he’s forged from the same ore, but he _isn’t_ , and he’s juggling hot ingots in the terrified hope they won’t find out.

He almost thinks that it would be easier if they found out. If he could just be a disappointment once and for all, this whole awful mess would be over, and he could go crawl into the bottom of a bottle and never come out.

 

****

 

He half-expects Meridian to be rubble when they arrive, and the anxiety only deepens as they round the butte from Cut Cliffs and the great city finally swells into view. Every cloud across the sky, every column of cooking smoke could be the one that darkens Avad’s sun. They don’t know when Dervahl will strike. All they know is that it will be big. The afternoon shadows crawl across Erend’s skin like damp-winged beetles, and he shivers despite the sweltering heat.

He’s too tired to cry. He’s too angry to fight. He’s molten slag, viscous and wasted. He wants to find Dervahl and kill him, but he’s too tired to even fantasize how.

Erend is drowning. He’s absolutely drowning, and he’s exhausted. All he wants to do is let the water draw him under, but then they’re at the main gate, and Aloy is waiting. She looks right at him, straight into his bones, her eyes bright and burning. His whole body aches, but there are freckles on her cheeks, and the sunset ablaze in her hair.

She is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. He doesn’t deserve a second of her attention, but here she is, prodding him into action with a single glance, so he squares his shoulders and swallows back his lunch.

There’s no time to waste. With the dust of the road still on his boots, they go to the palace. He almost chokes on the news, and when the Sun King goes utterly still, Erend suddenly knows that he was wrong about Ersa and Avad. A distant, hysterical part of his brain notes that skinny apparently _was_ her type. He’d been blind not to notice, and now he has to tell his king - his sister’s lover - that the whole city is in danger, and the captain of the Vanguard is now Ersa’s idiot brother, a useless drunk.

Incompetent. _Stupid_.

His throat is clogged with guilt, and he gestures to Aloy. She steps up, bright as fresh steel, and lays the evidence out. At Avad’s side, Blameless Marad is a calm, unsettling presence, his face impassive as he runs through the vast catalogue of his memory. Aloy knows a name. Marad knows the warehouse.

Dervahl is somewhere within the city walls. Erend is charging through the streets before he realizes what he’s doing. Avad had stressed Dervahl must be brought in alive, but Erend hasn’t quite decided if he’s going to do that. It’s more courtesy than Ersa had been shown, and Erend is too angry and too sad and too fucking sober to be courteous to anyone.

It’s no small consolation to have Aloy by his side. She will not suffer any hesitation. She’s forthright and demanding. In his dealings with the Nora, he’s found them to be as prickly and cold as their mountainous homeland. Before her Proving, he’d been too distracted by her wild mane of hair to notice that she was any different, but she _is_.

He’s not the sort of man who should be standing with her, but if he’s going to fill Ersa’s shoes, he has to _become_ that sort of man. As his boots hit the cobbles, he realizes with a hard chill that he’s going to have to start becoming that man right now. _No more playing around_. He’s done playing around. He’s played around far longer than he should have, and now he’s facing the consequences. His sister is dead. His king is in danger.

There’s a blindingly brilliant, wild-haired woman loping easily ahead of him, and fire and spit, he wants to be worthy of her time.

Aloy doesn’t have to be helping, but she is, and he’s already decided that whatever it is she’s searching for out there in the dangerous wilds, he’s going to do whatever he possibly can to assist. He’s brute force. He’s good at taking a blow, and he’s good at deflecting damage. Whatever Aloy needs hit, he’s going to hit it like a hammer until it can’t hit back. It's what he does. It's what he _is_ , but he's been too busy soaking himself in drink to remember.

They round a corner, and then she’s in the air, vaulting over a high wall, her words trailing behind her. “There’s a shortcut. I’ll meet you there.”

He’s got two Oseram heavies clanking behind him, but he’s hit with such a hard, sudden burst of clarity that he stumbles, and they almost collide.

Aloy is the most amazing thing he’s ever seen. She’s ruthless grace. She’s the hard strike to a charging machine. She’s tentative sympathy on a terrible, cold night. She has no business even looking his direction, but from that first moment in the Embrace, she hasn’t seemed to understand that. She watches him. She kills the things he sets her up to kill, and her eyes are the complex, mottled hue of good copper ore. She disapproves of his drinking, but she doesn’t disapprove of _him_.

Ersa is dead. Erend is a drunken wreck. Aloy is light in a world full of shadows and pain, and she’d been waiting for him at the gate because she’d said she’d be there.

Moths seek out light, he thinks, and die for it. Maybe they know, but they still can’t stay away. He feels like that, a slow, inexorable urge to set himself on fire in the wild blaze of her hair. It doesn’t feel like dying at all. It feels bright and warm and impossibly perfect, a gasping breath of fresh air he doesn’t know if he has the strength to take.

If this is immolation, he’s suddenly sure he’s going to it willingly, with his shoulders back and eyes open, and his heart held out on upturned palms.

 

****

 

Immolation, it turns out, has become a startlingly real possibility.

The warehouse is a bomb. The entire building is a bomb. His heart shudders to a halt in his chest when he sees the oozing jars of blaze. “Don’t touch it,” Aloy warns, as if he needed to be told.

Erend is brute force. He’s never needed to sneak or use traps or bombs. The only tripwires he’s ever encountered were the ones he stumbled into himself. He’s big and he’s heavy and his job is to get hit, but even if he knows absolutely nothing about explosives, he still knows what _too much blaze_ looks like, and somewhere deep in his bones, he knows this is going to hurt.

Aloy is alarmingly unphased. “One of these days,” he tells her, “shoving a pallet out a window is not going to work.”

She rolls her eyes, and he braces his legs to push.

 

****

 

He’s on the ground, his lungs gone hard and dense. His ears are ringing, and _Aloy_ \- where is-

There. She’s fine. She’s alive. She’s already on her feet and hoisting him up. Of course she is.

There’s smoke in the sky, smoke in his throat, smoke burning and clawing at his eyes. The city isn’t destroyed, but Dervahl isn’t dead.

Erend digs his feet into the stone and _runs_.

 

****

 

His duty is to protect Avad - _your king needs you_ \- and Dervahl is somewhere way too close, but Aloy is suddenly gone, disappearing into the stone with a quickly hissed, “I’ll take the back.”

For one brief, choking moment, Erend remembers blood on her face and shock wax on her lips, and he almost follows her.

He hasn’t prepared her for this. He hasn’t told her how clever Dervahl is. He hasn’t told her how Dervahl can spin two wires around a half-empty sparker and turn it into a bomb. He hasn’t told her how he’s seen Dervahl take down an entire platoon of Carja with a single jar of chillwater. He hasn’t told her how charming Dervahl can be, how reasonable and rational he is right up until the moment he reaches into your body and pulls out your guts.

Aloy has to know. She saw the machines he’d chained up and poked. She took down the Stormbird and disabled the devices that were luring the Glinthawks to Pitchcliff. Her trinket might have pointed out a few things in the dirt, but she herself pieced together what happened to Ersa. Maybe she hasn’t met Dervahl, but Aloy sees more from broken arrows and a few scraps of leather than most people see from a mountain of evidence. She’s bright and clever and so very, very competent.

 _Be safe_ , he thinks, _please, please, please be safe_ , but he’s not convinced she knows how.

 

****

 

He doesn’t make it to Avad in time.

He’s rounding the final corner on the terrace when he feels that awful thumping in his chest, and by the time it hits his ears, it’s too late. He’s on the ground, every muscle clenching and contracting as one, pain stabbing through his head even worse than his most crushing hangover. He can’t move. He can’t see. He almost can’t even breathe.

This is what Ersa felt. This is what Ersa felt for _weeks_ , and she still didn’t break.

He isn’t Ersa. He isn’t _Ersa_. He has not been Ersa his whole life, and he’s sober and aching and _everything hurts_ and he just wants it to stop.

Except...Aloy is still out there. Distantly, he realizes she has the magic trinkets that shield her from this. He wants those. He wants them at this moment more than he’s ever wanted a drink, and he wants her to give them to him _right now_ and he hates himself for being so selfish.

Aloy. Aloy. She isn’t here and he _hurts,_ but she’s air and she’s flame and if he holds the blinding light of her in his mind, if he lets himself burn like the blaze of her hair, he can almost - he can _almost-_

He curls up into a ball in the back of his mind. Ersa didn’t break, and Aloy will save him, and _his king needs him_ , so by the forge, if he can just keep breathing, he’s not going to break either.

 

****

 

Meridian is saved. He’s shaking in the aftermath of the noise, almost bent double under a splitting headache. His muscles have gone to water, but somehow, he’s on his feet.

Dervahl is captured, and Erend doesn’t kill him.

As they drag Ersa’s murderer away, Erend turns to look at Aloy, his breath still harsh in his throat. There are five dead Glinthawks on the terrace, and eight dead extremists in the hallways.

There’s a small scratch on her cheek, and glints of ice in the wild mess of her hair. He’s overwhelmed with awe and almost sick with relief.

Sparing Dervahl doesn’t feel good. Erend wants vengeance, but his king demanded otherwise, and he’s willingly complied. It’s not what Ersa would have done, but it’s what’s best for both the Carja and the Oseram. Killing Dervahl might have upset that balance, and it’s jarring to think that Ersa would have made the wrong choice, but there it is.

Days later, he’s still staggering under his responsibilities when Aloy finds him on the terrace. Erend is taking Ersa home to the Claim, and Aloy is not coming with him. She’s following her own path. She has to. She hasn’t said what she’s looking for. He’s wanted to ask, but there hasn’t been a free moment. There are accomplices to track down, reports to give, and men looking to him for guidance; he’s never going to be used to that, but he doesn’t have a choice. It’s what Avad has decreed, and so Erend has to swallow back his panic and try not to fuck up.

 _No more playing around_.

He isn’t. He can’t.

He’s wanted to find Aloy when they both have time to breathe, but time hasn’t happened. He wants to sit with her, to share a meal and listen while she talks. He’s seen her in passing, and every time, he’s desperate to slow down and spend a few precious moments in the warmth of her eyes. She’s a steady, glowing light beneath the pain and grief of the last few weeks, and he holds it close to his chest, hugging it against the hard, angry scream of the rest of the world. Well-meaning people keep telling him it will get better, that time will help him heal, but Ersa is _gone_ , and nothing will ever be the same. He’s wanted Aloy to distract him. He’s wanted to lose himself in the bright crown of her hair and let the rest of the world burn away around him.

He needs to thank her, both for the help she didn’t have to give, and for the simple fact of her existence. 

She’s leaving. She can’t stay, because of course she can’t. He’s known this would happen. He’s dreaded it like an inevitable blow that he can’t predict, but now that she’s standing in front of him, her travelling gear on her back, he feels...oddly calm. This is the hit he’s expecting. He knows how to take a hit, how to keep moving as the shock radiates through his body.

“I was lucky to get a minute of your time,” he tries. It’s the most sincere thing he’s ever said, and steel to his bones, he _means_ it. This isn’t idle flattery. This is the new Erend, the captain. Erend, who’s growing up fast because his sister told him to, right before she died in his arms. Erend, who is standing sober and grateful in front of this utterly unexpected, breathtakingly wild Nora. He won’t ask her to go with him to Mainspring. He can’t. It’s not her journey, just like he can’t follow her.

She scuffs her feet and twists a hank of hair, and fire and spit, he thinks she might be _bashful_. “I’ll always have a minute for you,” she says, and then adds impishly, “maybe even two.”

His eyes are burning, and his chest is an overfilled bellows set to burst. He turns the sniffle into a snort. “Two? Ha. She likes me.”

Someday, he’s not going to be an asshole, but right now her smirk is the greatest gift he’s ever been given.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is, uh, as far as I've gotten in this particular storyline in the game. I've read spoilers, and pretty sure it'll be revisited, but give me a week or two to play through so I get things right.


	5. Chapter 5

Compared to the heat and glory of Meridian, the Claim feels like a dusty backwater, but it fits him like a well-worn pair of boots. His duty is to Avad, but it’s not a burden he can’t bear. It’s a weight he’s good at lifting, the kind that leaves his muscles raw with a deep, satisfied ache. He’ll go back to Meridian before long, but for now, it’s enough to be among his clansmen, to sit in the middle of a circle of hard-drinking cousins and tell grand tales of Ersa’s exploits.

Everywhere he goes, another beer is pressed into his hands, but he makes himself carry the mug until he can set it down. It’s painfully hard and he grits his teeth, shaking for the taste of it in his mouth. It’s almost heresy for an Oseram not to drink himself blind, but Erend isn’t just any Oseram. He’s the captain of the Sun King’s Vanguard, the little brother who is stepping up to fill Ersa’s shoes. He feels Adar’s eyes heavy on his shoulders, but it isn’t judgmental. Ersa’s second - _his_ second - is watching, but Erend is trying not to need a minder.

_No more playing around._

His men are thoroughly enjoying themselves. He’s very aware of how stifling Meridian can be, the way the differences between Oseram and Carja can grate on a man’s senses. Every single one of them have chosen to be Vanguardsmen, but it’s good to be home, and it’s good to be among their own people. He appreciates that. Even if he’s standing aside, he won’t hold them back.

The guys, however, have a different opinion. “You never come out with us anymore,” Nyler finally complains.

“I’m the captain now,” Erend says, but claps a friendly hand on the man’s shoulder. “It’ll be better if the boss isn’t around.”

“Used to go have _fun_. There’s proper women here, none of those stuck-up Carja ladies.”

“Got his eye on that Nora warmaiden,” Tandin says with a suggestive elbow to Nyler’s ribs.

Kip leers. “More than an eye.”

Erend cuffs him across the back of the head. “Enough.”

“Fine,” says Tandin, grinning. “We’ll just have the conversation without you. It’ll be rumors and wild speculation.”

“There’s nothing to speculate about,” he retorts, and the others leave, laughing.  

Only Adar stays behind. “Pity about the Nora,” he says, and there might actually be a twist of humor in his thin lips. He raises an eyebrow. “I rather like her.”

It’s a shocking bit of approval from the man who was Ersa’s steadfast second, and Erend can only stand there dazed as Adar walks away.

 

****

 

Erend hears from one of the tavern women that a certain delver is back in Mainspring, and before he can stop himself, he’s banging on Olin’s door. His former friend looks pale and drawn and there are deep, purpling bruises on his face. Behind him are his wife and son, and the look on his face is fierce.

“Can we talk?” Olin says tightly. “Elsewhere?”

“Fine,” says Erend, and he manages not to punch the man who helped kill every Nora at the Proving but Aloy.

He’s still on the edge of hard, furious violence when Olin lays it all out, and fire and spit, Erend can’t dispense justice that isn’t his to dispense, and Aloy had other plans entirely. “She let me _go_ ,” Olin says in a hushed voice. “I don’t - I don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve any of this, not with what I’ve done. But she let me walk away, and then she helped get Enasha and Elir home safely, and…” His eyes glisten with tears. “I owe her my life, and everything I do from now on is going to be worthy of that trust.”

Erend understands. He knows exactly, and it comes together in his chest like the teeth of a perfectly-honed gear. It must show on his face, because Olin leans forward with the fervent interest of a recent convert. “Tell me what’s happened. Tell me everything.”

So - Erend talks. The jewel on Olin’s head is gone, and even after everything, he still _likes_ Olin. He’s angry, but there’s really no one else he can talk to. In Meridian, the Carja aren’t exactly lining up to befriend the Oseram in their midst, and he can drink with his fellow Vanguardsmen, but he can’t exactly _confide_ , and Ersa is gone. He's never had the same familiarity with Avad that Ersa did; not at all the same familiarity, he’s come to learn. Even now, that knowledge feels odd, raw but not...wrong. It feels like something he knew in his gut but not in his head. Away from Meridian, back here in the Claim, he’s still Ersa’s little brother, and those who support the Oseram presence in the Sundom are deferential to his sister’s influence. Those that aren’t, well...they’re not really talking to him anyway.

He has no shortage of drinking companions, but he doesn't actually have any  _friends._

He thinks about Aloy, about hope and possibility, but she disappears as soon as the last machine is killed. She’s not the type to sit across from him and drink a beer, and she’s _gone_. If he’s painfully honest with himself, he knows he can’t expect to see her again.

“I heard about Ersa,” Olin breathes. “Steel to my bones, I’m sorry.” He stares down into his mug. “I’m so sorry.”

Erend’s hands clench around the tankard, but he doesn’t drink.

 

***

 

Erend is in Mainspring for the better part of a month, and he meets Olin more evenings than not. It’s a relief to have someone to talk to, someone who isn’t counting his cups and finding him lacking.

“Maybe it's not for me to say,” Olin says one night, “but that girl’s got your head all turned.”

“It’s that obvious?”

The delver raises an eyebrow. “Just a bit.”

Erend makes himself shrug, and drawls, “Can’t blame a man for looking.” He regrets it as soon as he says it. Aloy isn’t like that, and she deserves better than that from him.

Stupid.

Olin shakes his head. “I’m not judging. I’ve known you since your voice was still cracking, so just hear me out.” He leans forward. “I’ve been in the thick of it, Erend. I’ve seen the worst kind of people. By the forge, I’m glad to be out, but if I’ve learned anything, I’ve learned there's three kinds of fearless in this world. A person gets fearless, they’re either stupid, desperate or they’ve got nothing left to lose. Aloy, now - we’ve both seen her. Fire and _spit_ , she’s fearless.”

Erend swallows, not at all sure where this is going but very sure he’s not going to like where it ends.

“She's not stupid,” Olin goes on. “We both know it. She can take care of herself, so she’s not desperate. She calculates. She knows how to get out if she needs to.”

Erend thinks of blood on her face, and a Stormbird’s corpse in the snow. He shivers.

“There’s only one explanation left,” Olin says quietly, “and steel to my bones, I think it’s my fault.”

They don’t talk much after that. Erend stays, his knuckles white around his tankard. He can’t deny that Olin is probably right. Aloy lost someone. He’s pretty sure it was at the Proving, but she’s never actually said. Whatever happened, the people who murdered the Nora saw Aloy through Olin’s trinket, and drowned an entire clan in blood. He remembers the sound of their grief, the wild howl that rose up more bleak and terrifying than the deepest winter storm. He doesn’t want to say it was Olin’s fault, but he can’t _not_ say that. Neither of them can.

“This isn’t the sort of thing a man atones for,” Olin finally says. “Not to her, not to anyone. I know that. Steel to my bones, I know. Someday, my son’s going to find out what I’ve done, and I don’t know what the hell I’m going to tell him.”

“You’ll say you tried to take care of your family,” Erend says, and it doesn’t at all sound like something that would normally come out of his mouth.

“Maybe.” Olin stares into his cup. “I just hope our girl finds her mother.”

He almost chokes on his own spit. “What?”

The delver raises an eyebrow. “I thought you knew.”

“I, um.” Erend can’t say that he didn’t ask. It sounds churlish, but he’s been so locked up in his own grief that the words never came out, and she’d never volunteered.

“Aloy looks just like her,” Olin goes on. “I think she’s involved with the Eclipse somehow. I saw recordings of her.”

“She never said.”

He shakes his head. “She didn’t say it was her mother, but the resemblance - Erend, it was uncanny. Looked just like her. No way it can’t be.”

Erend rolls his tankard between his hands. The only time he’s been to the Embrace was the trip with Avad’s envoy, and he’d been such a cocky bung he hadn’t bothered to read up. The Nora are as obsessed with the lineage of their mothers as the Carja are with their fathers, and it makes a cruel kind of sense that Aloy would have been forced to grow up outcast if her father was Nora but her mother was not. If her mother is working with the Eclipse, that means she’s probably Carja, and any child born of that union would have a hard, treacherous journey amid the chaos and aftermath of the Red Raids.

Suddenly, Aloy’s prickly distance makes a painful amount of sense, and his heart shudders in his chest. She didn’t even _know_ about the Red Raids, and if he hadn’t already been thunderstruck by the wild blaze of her presence, that fact alone would have blown him away.

“Why would they try and kill her, if her mother is working for them?” Erend asks. “Shouldn’t they want her? Or at least want to use her as leverage?”

Olin shrugs helplessly. “They don’t want her alive. That’s all I know, and fire and spit, they’re unstoppable.”

He thinks about the Stormbird, the machine no other hunter could take down. He thinks of how she’d gone off on her own and done the worst of the work. He thinks about how he almost hadn’t seen her except for the brightness of her hair half-buried in the snow. He suddenly doesn’t trust that she won’t try to take on the entire Eclipse by herself, and he absolutely believes that she'll take half of them with her.

“If you see her again, tell her not to do it,” Erend says, his voice swelling on a thick bubble of panic. “Tell her we’ll be behind her. Tell her she has allies. Tell her-”

“I know, son,” Olin says. “Steel to my bones, I know.”

 

****

 

Ersa is laid to rest, and Erend is back in Meridian. The air is thick with summer, and when he takes off his armor at the end of the day, the padding is soaked with sweat.

It’s odd to think of the Carja capital as home, but here he is. Every street reminds him of Ersa. Every conversation with Avad is suddenly different. He tries not to think of how the king and his sister hid themselves, but he can’t help it. He wonders when it started. He wonders how long he’s been oblivious, and if Ersa had deliberately cultivated his ignorance or merely accepted it.

He wonders what other secrets she had, and if he'll ever come to know them. He wonders if she'd ever felt crushed by the loneliness, of loving a man she couldn't have, and loving an idiot brother she kept having to haul out of the bottom of a bottle. 

It adds a strange new twist in his duty to Avad. Avad has been a brother-in-arms since the very start of the insurrection, and Erend would follow him anywhere, but the reality that he might have been a brother-in-law as well only further cements that feeling. First, he’d fought for Avad because he’d freed Ersa, and then he’d fought because Ersa told him it was the right thing to do. Now, he stands guard because Avad is the cause Ersa believed in. 

He wonders if Ersa believed in Avad the same way Erend believes in Aloy, but he knows his sister, and he sort of suspects it was the other way around. Avad has the bloodline and the conviction; Ersa did all the rest.

Erend doesn't have any bloodline worth mentioning. His mother is dead, and if there's any justice in this universe, his father's dead, too. Ersa is gone. The only thing he has to offer is the solid bulk of his muscle, and the honed blade of his axe. He doesn’t have any idea if Aloy will take it. Part of him is afraid that if she finds her mother, and her mother is part of Eclipse, Aloy will join her.

Someday, there might come a battle where Erend won’t be the one to set Aloy up for the kill, and the thought leaves him cold and blank. He shoves it to the back of his mind, welding it up in a box of Oseram steel that will never, ever be opened.

Instead, he wonders about Aloy. She’d vaguely hinted she was heading north, so he wonders if she’s made it into the mountains unscathed. He hopes she’s okay. He hopes the machines have been easy to subdue and the bandits weak and disorganized. He hopes she’s finding what she’s looking for.

He hopes maybe somehow, someday, she’ll find her way back to Meridian.


	6. Chapter 6

Erend doesn’t expect a lot of things. He didn’t expect Aloy, and a few weeks after he gets back to Meridian, he _really_ doesn’t expect to be greeted by the Sunhawk of the Lodge.

He’d heard the former leader had been killed by the legendary Redmaw, but when it comes to Carja politics, he has one job, and one job only: protect Avad, and protect his interests. He might be captain of the Vanguard now, but he isn’t Ersa, and any political battles he doesn’t absolutely need to address, he’s not going to.

“You,” says the Sunhawk, appearing like a mirage to lean casually against a nearby wall. “You're Erend.”

He is. He’s constantly reminded.  

“My Thrush mentioned you,” the Hawk says, with the satisfied smile of someone who’s solved a particularly juicy mystery.

“Your Thrush,” he says doubtfully. Despite being equally culled for the Sun Ring, the noble Carja warriors generally don't care to have the Oseram in Meridian, and the Vanguard in particular. Dervahl’s attempted assassination has not won the Vanguard any supporters, and fire and spit, this wouldn’t have _happened_ if Ersa hadn’t gone off on her own.

(In the dark corners of his brain, he thinks it probably would have. He’s a drunken idiot, and absolutely nothing could have stopped her.)

He hears the chatter in the streets. He firmly agrees that Dervahl should be killed like the deranged machine he is, but he also knows his people; the Carja might think they have an exquisite talent for cruelty, but nothing compares to the blunt, deliberate torture of the Oseram. The Carja are too busy gazing at the sun to acknowledge their own shadows, and the Oseram have been black with soot for their entire history.

This Hawk, however, doesn’t seem like she’s on any quest for misplaced political vengeance. Instead, she rocks back on her heels, grinning. “I think you’d recognize her.”

Redmaw is dead, the fabled Thunderjaw. There’s no possible way, but his heart lodges in his throat. “ _Aloy_?”

The Hawk’s grin intensifies. “I thought so.”

A thousand questions spring into his mouth, and none of them manage to come out.

 

****

 

Erend doesn't socialize with Carja, especially not nobles, but in short order, here he is, sitting across a table from Talanah Khane Padish, Sunhawk of the Lodge. She’s leaning easily on an elbow, almost languid with amusement. “I see why she mentioned you,” the Sunhawk drawls. “I just don’t understand why she didn’t mention you _all the time._  What’s it that you people say? ‘You look fresh from the forge’?”

He’s not sure if he should be flattered or offended.

“She said she helped you catch Dervahl,” Talanah goes on. “Not everyone is pleased with the extradition, but I’m sure you’re well-aware of that.”

He snorts. “I’ve heard a few things.”

She chuckles. “Well, you’ll get no argument from me. The Oseram were a valuable asset in bringing light back to the Sundom, and most families will shred their own much more fiercely than a stranger. If Aloy vouches for you, that’s more than enough in my book. That girl did more to restore the honor of the Lodge in a week than I’ve been able to do in two years.”

“Should you even be talking to me?” he asks. “Speaking of the Lodge’s honor.”

“Pfah.” She smirks. “I’m the Sunhawk talking to the Captain of the Vanguard about a mutual associate. Anyone who has a problem with that can go take down their own Thunderjaw.”

For as much time as he spends being painfully aware he’s the captain, he keeps forgetting that _he’s the captain._

Aloy isn’t here. According to Talanah, she came into town sometime while he was in Mainspring, stayed barely long enough to single-handedly bring down the entire Lodge political structure - _of course she did_ \- and then disappeared back into the wild.

There’s a hard slap of disappointment, but what he does is _laugh,_ because it’s _hilarious._  It’s exactly the sort of crazy, unexpected thing she would do, and beneath the lingering ache of her absence, there’s a warm bubble of awe. He doesn’t have any claim on her, but steel to his bones, he’s grateful she’s alive.

“For an Oseram, you don't drink much,” Talanah observes with a raised eyebrow. “I’d heard rumors to the contrary.”

“Wouldn’t want to dilute my charm,” he says, and then more honestly, “It wasn’t doing me any favors.”

She nods thoughtfully. “I can respect that.” She’s smelting some of the same ore: she’s got a lot of eyes suddenly watching her, and any perceived misstep has the potential to upset the delicate balance between progress and tradition. She’s managing through wit, competence and bloodline; he’s managing through bluster and sheer terror.

He’s not sure he will ever call her a _friend._  Her presence feels like a pacified Sawtooth, bristling and uncertain. In the meantime, Talanah is another connection to Aloy, and he will do whatever it takes to hear news of her.  

 

****

 

The number of times Aloy staggers into his life and immediately collapses is getting _alarming._

He’s just walking out of a meeting with the Carja garrison commander when one of the city runners skids to a stop by the door.

“What is it?” the garrison commander asks.

“Not you, sir,” the runner gasps out, pointing at Erend. “Him _._ ”

Erend _runs_.

He’s getting rather good at not expecting, at sitting back and just letting fate wash over him with whatever it’s going to bring, but every single time, Aloy knocks him on his ass.

She’s sprawled in the dust just outside of the southern gate, not quite in the vegetation beside the road. Her legs are folded awkwardly underneath her, and there’s a dark crust of dried blood from her nose to her chin. Four of the Carja guards are standing at a distance, close enough for curiosity, but far enough back in alarm.

“Came up on a Charger,” one of the guards says breathlessly. The machine in question is standing placidly nearby.

“Asked for you by name,” adds another.

He’s already past them and on his knees. “ _Aloy_ ,” he says. “By the forge-”

She raises her head, eyes half-lidded and unfocused. “Silence,” she mumbles, the word very nearly a name, and reaches out to grasp his hand. “ _Lied."_

“Can you stand?” he asks.

“...yes.” She makes no move to get up.

“Aloy.” He touches two fingers to her chin, tilting her from side to side to see if she’s still bleeding. It’s the most he dares touch her. “Are you with me?”

She blinks at him. “Trust is for fools,” she says, and then her eyes roll back in her head.

 

****

 

She has three cracked ribs and a concussion. He has no idea where she’s been. Her inexplicable mount is down by the river, having wandered unhurried back to a herd of its fellows.

She’s well-known enough that even the barest whisper of a Nora brings a throng of the curious, and to prevent a crowd, Erend intimidates the Carja gate guards to help sneak her into his own apartments. Almost immediately, one of Marad’s agents is there. One of Avad’s personal healers follows shortly after. “Did she say anything?” the Sun King is asking through Marad’s amanuensis. “Do we know what happened?”

Erend has no answers.

Aloy sleeps in his bed, bruises forming deep and purple in the hollows of her eyes. He sits in the chair he’s hauled up from downstairs, paralyzed by her sudden presence. It’s been two months since he came back from the Claim. Sometimes, he thinks he’s imagined her, that the Nora girl with the blaze of red hair is only a product of grief and alcohol.

He keeps telling himself he’s hoping for things that were never there. He’s a stupid, besotted bung, mooning after a woman who is out of his league and completely uninterested. She has no use for him; she’s proven that point again and again. She is more than capable of taking care of herself, and she doesn’t need an incompetent drunk following her around.

Except...he remembers dark shock wax dribbling from her lips, and the way he’d knocked the belly plate from a Sawtooth to open it up for her kill. He’d been drowning, and she’d been a sudden gulp of air. He didn’t expect her, and he still doesn’t expect her, but somehow, she’d known he’d be a soft place to land.

By the forge, he _wants_ to be. She doesn’t need his help, but he wants to help, even if that only means being a temporary den for her to lick her wounds.

When the sun goes down, he lights the oil lantern by the window and returns to his chair. Aloy mutters, shifting in his bedclothes, and then she’s staring right at him, her eyes wide and alarmed.

“...Erend?”

He scoots his chair closer to the bed. “There you are.”

“...what are you doing here?”

“I live here.”

She looks around, frowning. “Where...?”

“Meridian. You came right up to the gate and almost dropped dead.”

Something flickers across her face.

He leans forward. “Aloy. Do you remember what happened? What happened?”

Her entire body is still, an awful blankness in her eyes.

“Please tell me,” he says. “I can help. I can hit something. I’m good at hitting things.”

“You’re here,” she says, and it’s almost a question.

“You came here,” he says. “Where else would I be?”

“You’re _here_ ,” she repeats.

“What happened?” He searches her face, looking for something, anything, any kind of clue. All he sees are bruises and the low undercurrent of anger.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” she croaks. “It was the closest, and I needed - I shouldn’t have-”

“No,” he says forcefully. “You _should_ have come here. Steel to my bones, I’d rather you were here than anywhere else.”

She stares at him.

“I mean it.”

There’s a long pause. He can see her waking up and collecting herself, tucking the various parts of herself back into place with the same efficiency he’s seen her construct an arrow. “I can’t stay,” she finally says.

Fire and _spit_. He swallows hard on a hot swell of anger. She blows in like a raging fire that can’t be stopped, and she consumes him without even trying. He’s captive to her light, and she doesn’t even realize it, and she _leaves._  He remembers blood on her face and shock wax on her lips, the tawny flag of her hair amid hard drifts of snow. “Where are you going?” he demands before he can stop himself. She’s not going to tell him, and he _knows_ that. If she were the sort of person to talk, they’d have talked months ago. She’d talked to him about Olin only because she’d needed that information, and any pleasantries Erend’s ever tried have been bluntly rebuffed.

“North,” she says.

He almost snaps _to find your mother_ , but if she is, if that’s where she’s going...he doesn’t want to know. Part of him is dying to ask, but the questions swell up in his throat like poisonous fruit. Olin’s voice echoes in his head-

But Aloy is here. She’s _here_. Even battered, she’s lying in his bed, propped up on his pillows. She’s in his space, sour with sweat and travel. Erend feels like he’s coming down with a fever, chilled and hot at the same time and more than a little dizzy. “Aloy-”

“I’m faster alone,” she mumbles. Her eyes are already slipping closed. “There’s no time.”

It’s a long time before he realizes his hands are clenched in hard fists, and he forces himself to relax. He desperately wants a drink, wants the rough burn as the alcohol strips away everything he’s feeling and replaces it with a vague, aching blur. He feels _helpless,_  and he hates himself for it. He has no claim on Aloy. He owes her for helping to find Ersa, and he owes her for helping to bring Dervahl to justice.

He owes her this help, this quiet room to stop and heal, because that’s exactly what she’s done for him. She’d laid down next to him and gripped the tangle of his hair hard enough to hurt, and brought him back to himself when he was reeling from Ersa’s death. He’d needed that. He should be doing the same thing right now, except he doesn’t know what she needs. He doesn’t know what she’d accept.  

She doesn’t owe him information. She doesn’t owe him her time. She owes him _nothing,_ and here he is, grasping like a child at her sleeve, projecting his own insecurities and pretending he isn’t.

By the window, the oil lamp flickers behind the damp shadow of a moth.

 

****

 

Despite himself, he falls asleep and dreams.

He’s walking along one of the dense jungle paths beneath the buttes. It’s night, the comforting buzz of insects radiating from the trees. Glowbugs dance in the tall grass, and somewhere in the distance, a fox barks. He looks up, and beyond the dark canopy, the sky is a deep field of stars, the pale swath of celestial clouds a hopeful brightness against the black.

There’s a faint whirr of servos powering up, and Erend dives into the undergrowth. Peering out, he sees a Watcher, its lens unworried, a tangle of luminous blue cables wrapped like sinew up its throat. It perks up, scanning its surroundings.

It’s pacified. Aloy had said she could override a Watcher for a bare handful of minutes. If he can get close enough, maybe he can kill the thing before it reverts back-

But when he gets closer, heart pounding, he sees a familiar form nestled in the leaves directly underneath it. For a hard moment, he can’t breathe, but then he realizes she’s completely relaxed, her hair a wild pillow beneath her head. The Watcher cocks its head at his approach, chirping anxiously.

Aloy reaches up a hand to sleepily pat the machine’s leg. “S’alright, little one. He’s not a threat.”

The Watcher considers, a faint grind as its lens sweeps down Erend’s body. It makes a thoughtful burble, glances down at Aloy, and then swishes back to its previous patrol.

“Aloy,” he breathes, because she can’t _trust_ that thing. Can she?

“You don’t have any idea,” she retorts, not even opening her eyes. “How can you?”

He’s so startled that he almost falls out of the chair, waking himself up with a jerk.

 

****

 

The next morning, there’s some unavoidable bit of Vanguard business he has to attend to, and by the time he gets home, she’s already packed up her things. She hasn't even stayed a full day; the bruises on her face are the mottled colors of a moody sunset, and when she swings her bow across her body, she moves with a pained hiss.

“Can you even draw that?” he asks pointedly.

She scowls. “It’s fine.”

The last time they’d said goodbye, he’d been wrapped in grief like thick fur, numbed by a seeping, calm acceptance. Now, he’s angry and raw, torn between wanting to shake answers from her and knowing that she’d shred him if he even tried. He hadn’t thought he’d see her again, but here she is, and now that she’s leaving, he’s _really_ not sure, and he wants to scream. “I get that you don’t want to tell me where you’re going,” he says. “But can you at least tell me why?”

“It’s my fight.” She frowns, as if this were obvious. “I can’t ask you to help.”

Fire and _spit_. He’s been offering himself abjectly, shamelessly, since the very first moment he _saw_ her, and she’s still staring like she has no idea, like his offer isn’t even worth considering. He’d thought he was doing better. He’s stepping into his sister’s boots, and if he isn’t Ersa, he hasn’t been called to the carpet either, and that has to count for something. He’s making a solid effort to drink less and it _hurts,_ but he’s mostly doing it.

He’s been almost _proud_ , and suddenly it’s all shattered at his feet. He feels like he’s been dropped in the butte elevator, weightless and sick. “You don’t need help,” he manages. “I know that. I’m just...fire and spit, I worry, okay?”

She blinks at him, and her tone is doubtful. “You worry about me.”

It doesn’t matter. Not at all. He’s already ash in her searing presence, and he doesn’t deserve to be even that.

He is _not_ going to cry.

“Erend…” She bites her lip. “It’s...complicated.”

“Don’t I know it.” He hates himself immediately. “Look,” he says. “I owe you.” He hates that even more. It’s more than owing. It’s not about owing at all. Even in Meridian - even under the perennial sun - she is a singular light, a bright, perfect point that captures his gaze and steals his breath. He's saying this so very, very badly. “You don’t need help, but if you did…” He shrugs helplessly. “I’m blunt force. I can do that.”

“You’re more than that.” This, too, like it’s obvious, and then earnestly, almost shyly: “You seem better.”

Fire and spit, he feels like his chest is going to explode. “ _You don’t_ ,” falls out of his mouth, and even as he’s saying it he wants the ground to open up and swallow him.

Mercifully, she laughs, but it’s cut short by a wince. “Ersa would be proud of you.”

Anger flares again, because how the hell would she know what Ersa would or wouldn’t be proud of? The day Aloy met his sister was the day Ersa _died,_ and she can’t possibly know what Ersa would think.

Except...she’s probably right. There’s something in Aloy that echoes Ersa’s spirit, and he hates it and loves it all at the same time. It’s intangible, indescribable, and yet painfully familiar. “I’m working on it,” he allows. “It’s not as good as it could be, but...I’m trying.”

She’s quiet a moment. “I’m looking for answers from the Ancients,” she finally says. “About the Derangement, and how to fix it.”

His heart shudders in his chest, and for a moment, he can’t breathe. “And that’s north?”

“North,” she confirms.

“Pitchcliff,” he says. “You know the area. Get supplies before heading further into the mountains. The storms are bad this time of year-”

“Not Pitchcliff,” she says quietly, and his stomach turns to ice.

“You’re _not._ ”

“I don’t have a choice.” The blankness is back in her eyes, and all he can think is _at least she’s not happy about this._

“Fire and spit,” he says, because it’s the only thing he can say. He doesn’t want to ask about what Olin said. He doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want to _know_. “They’ll shred you, Aloy. Hammer to steel, they will-”

“I know.” Her hands tighten on the curve of her bow. “But I don’t have a choice.”

“Can you wait?” He wants her to stay. He needs her to stay, if only because she’s still holding herself painfully stiff. She’ll have better luck when she's healed, and if she stays to heal, maybe he can convince her-

“There’s no time,” she says.

He feels like bad steel, whining against a pressure too great to bear. “I didn’t think I’d see you again,” he says, and tries to swallow back the desperation. “I’d really, really like to.”

“I have to go.”

“Well.” He’s falling back into old ruts before he can stop himself. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

She frowns at him. “I don’t blame you for anything.”

“Get out of here,” he says lightly. He’s easy. He’s jovial. He’s the charming sort of guy people love to drink with. “You’re breaking my heart.”

He is definitely not falling apart right in front of her.

Aloy leaves, because of course she does, and for the second time in his life, he falls into bed face-first to memorize her scent. Later, he’ll meet with Avad and tell his king the nothing he knows; in the meantime, he has to concentrate very hard on not moving, because if he does, it will be straight to the tavern to drown himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set immediately after To Curse The Darkness (because I wanted it, obvs)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> added a couple of tags, but they're not that important.

He talks to Ersa.

Not really, of course, because she’s six months dead and sent off in as raucous a wake as any Oseram has ever gotten. Instead, he walks the walls of Meridian, or sits and sharpens his axe, or lies in bed at night and imagines what she’d have to say.

_Hey, Ersa - what do you think of Aloy?_

_I died, idiot. I never even met her._

_She helped me find you. I think you’d like her._

It always dissolves there. He can imagine what Ersa would say about Aloy - _awfully skinny for you, little brother_ \- but he doesn’t have the steel to go any further. He can’t ask _hey Ersa, what are my chances with this girl_ because he _knows_ she’d just slap him upside the head and tell him to straighten himself out.

The Ersa-in-his-head doesn’t know Aloy, and really, neither does Erend. The worst part is, all his attempts to actually _learn_ about her have been firmly, thoroughly rebuffed. She’s an essential element to his being in a way he didn’t ask for and can’t deny, and he feels like he’s starving.

He thinks of Dervahl, of how he’s pursued Ersa despite her repeated refusals. Erend doesn’t want to be like that. He absolutely doesn’t. He doesn’t want to make Aloy feel uncomfortable or pressured or unsafe, and because of that, he’s going to keep his words behind his teeth and his eyes where they should be. He is not going to abandon his duty to Avad and rush out into the wilderness after her.  

He should just forget the whole damn thing. He’s a drunken bung who’s trying very hard to be worthy of his sister’s legacy, and he’s the captain of the Vanguard of the Sun-King himself, and he has no business mooning after a machine-killing wildwoman who skirts the edges of civilization like a wary Strider.

“You’re delving somewhere you don’t know,” Olin had pointed out in Mainspring. “You have no map for this. Might be something there, might not. You know that.”

He’d known. “That’s never stopped you.”

Olin had nodded soberly. “And look where it got me. Voices in my head, monsters after my hide, my hands soaked in blood. Everything I love almost burned away.”

Erend had just hummed into the foam of the beer he was trying not to drink. Aloy’s already consumed his brain, and even if she brings monsters, she masters them, too. The blood family he cares about is gone. He’s willing walked into this uncharted cavern, and he might not be ready for what he finds, but he’s committed to finding it.

 

*****

 

He’s mostly good about not drinking, at least not as much as he used to. He thinks about it with every breath. He makes sure he’s carrying water at all times, so he doesn’t have the excuse of being thirsty, and he’s taken to chewing on sharply pungent seeds as a means of distracting his mouth.    

Then there’s a hard day; nothing in particular, just a heavy accumulation of slag. At the end of it, he sees a red-haired woman in the marketplace who suddenly, agonizingly isn’t Aloy, and he loses himself completely.

“Thought you didn’t do that anymore,” Talanah observes, as he sinks into another tankard.

He’s lost count of how many he’s had, but he’s chasing a loose-limbed contentment that he can’t seem to find.

“Bottoms up,” she agrees.

He doesn’t mean to fuck her, but it happens anyway. By the time they leave the tavern, they’re both staggering, and it’s so late the stars are beginning to fade. He’s letting his body slump in the direction of his apartment when Talanah abruptly shoves him up against a wall. “Let me walk you home,” she breathes, and even though he knows exactly what that means, he lets her.

She’s the first woman to gain acceptance to the Lodge, and the first woman to become Sunhawk. She’s a scion of one of the oldest and most respected noble families in the entire Sundom, and she is _incredibly_ beautiful. She is smooth and slick and painfully arousing, and he absolutely shouldn’t partake, but he does.

Afterward, he watches her clean herself and slip back into her bright silks. He feels sick in a way that has nothing to do with his incipient hangover.

“If you were anyone else, I’d be upset,” Talanah says, braiding up her sash. “I've seen happier faces on men thrown into the Sun Ring.”

“No, it’s not-” he tries, but she’s holding up a hand.

“It’s an honor that the Thrush burns brighter than the Hawk. It means I’ve chosen well.” She tucks the last knot into place. “I know where your loyalties lie. You’ve never been mine.”

 

****

 

He hates himself for days.

 

****

 

Avad leans on his Vanguard, and Erend makes himself a pillar. It’s easier to be stone than human, and if he wraps himself in steel, he can at least pretend he has everything under control. Protecting Avad means protecting Meridian, and he’s the captain.

Bandits threaten some of the outlying farms; he joins the Carja guards for swift, brutal retaliation. Machines encroach the main roads, the dark cloud of Derangement boiling around them; Erend meets them with his feet planted and his axe up. It’s a brief, thrilling distraction, a bloodlust that almost, almost chases away the howl in his bones for drink.

Talanah hasn’t mentioned their night together, and acts as though it never happened at all, but Erend has been blown wide open. Ersa liked to say that awareness makes the sharpest weapon, and he feels like he’s accidentally created a sword and fallen straight onto its blade.

It isn’t Talanah. It’s never been Talanah. It’s an activation he’s struggled to avoid, a beacon he’s tried desperately not to light, but it crashes into him with the deadly force of a furious Ravager. He’s been doused in blaze and gone up in a white-hot plume.

It’s not that he hasn’t ever thought about it. He’s mostly been content to enjoy the glow of his affection, to remember Aloy beside him in battle and turn the memory over and over in his head until it’s as smooth as a river-worn stone. He’s nursed the slow burn of hope through the buffeting winds of good sense, and he’s tried so hard to be pure.

Now, he can’t. Talanah woke him up in a way he didn’t mean to be woken, and now, Aloy is all he can think about. He imagines her rising above him, all lithe muscle and easy strength, and he violently explodes into his own hand. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t use her like this, but he _misses_ her, his body suddenly, ferociously craving something he’s never actually had.

He hears Ersa _tch_ in his head, and he hates himself even more.

He’s not sure he’ll ever see Aloy again. He knows all too well the dangers the wilderness holds, and he knows she’s good, but no one is that good forever. The Derangement is still a creeping, insidious force, and someday, there will be a metal beast that even Aloy can’t take down.

Still, that doesn’t stop him from scanning the crowds for her, and it doesn’t stop his heart from shuddering in his chest when he sees a flash of flame-red hair. He makes a point to talk with the traders he knows she’s frequented. He rotates patrol schedules, and once every few weeks, he makes the circuit through the market square.

“I’m sorry, I haven’t seen her,” says the herbalist.

“Who is it you’re looking for?” says the artifacts merchant, peering through his spectacles. “I’m sure I’d remember someone like that.”

“Still nothing,” the armorer says, shaking his head in amusement. “You’ve got it bad, boy.”

Avad knows he’s checking. “No news from our Nora friend?” he asks, and Erend has to admit there isn’t.

There are, however, reports of villages being liberated from raiders. A hunter tells of stumbling across an artifact dig filled with the corpses of cultists and the machines they’d attempted to control. Erend thinks of Olin, and how Aloy showed him mercy when he deserved none.

He wonders where she draws the line. He wonders how she decides who lives and who dies.

He wonders how she’s handling Eclipse. He wonders if he even wants to know.

 

****

 

He’s trying to stop drinking, and he’s trying to stop hating himself. He’s trying to stop being incompetent. There’s so much he’s trying to _stop_ doing that sometimes, he forgets the things he’s trying to _actually_ do. He’s trying to be worthy of Ersa’s legacy. He’s trying to be a solid, reliable bulwark between Avad and the world. He’s trying to be the sort of man who can stand by Aloy and not shatter in her presence.

He’s trying to believe he’ll see her again, and he’s trying not to drown in that hope.

 

****

 

Erend is brute strength. He’s solid and threatening bulk. He knows how to be hit, and he’s had a lifetime of experience. He is very familiar with muscle.  

He knows the moment when muscle fails. He knows the difference between stopping to rest and total collapse. Strength dies, the body shudders, and suddenly, the weight that used to be easily lifted becomes painfully impossible to hold.

At some point, he realizes that’s where he is with Aloy.

It’s been months. Almost more than months. The dry forge of summer has passed into the rainy season’s cloying humidity. There have been Glinthawks in the buttes. There have been bandits and Snapmaws near the river. The Shadow Carja lurk on Avad’s borders, and grumbling nobles fill his court.

Ersa is dead. Erend is mostly sober. Aloy is still gone.

He doesn’t know when he stopped carrying that weight, but he’s lying in bed, blank and exhausted, when he realizes it’s gone. His pillows no longer smell like her, and it’s been weeks since he’s heard even the barest rumor.

He misses her. He misses the idea of her. The air around him is thick and damp, but it feels like he’s never been warm. If he closes his eyes, he can see her standing in the Embrace, sharp, curious eyes and a corona of bright, blazing hair. It might be contradictory, to be a stationary guard so taken with a wandering woman, but he doesn’t feel torn. He’s just tired.

When muscle fails, the load drops, and where it drops, that’s where it stays. For a few, scattered days, he’d had what she needed. He’d felt more useful and competent than he’d ever felt in his entire life. He hadn’t known what that was like. It wasn’t a shape Erend knew how to forge, but even though he’s a piss-poor smith, he keeps hammering. He’d needed to learn something from her and she’d taught him. Now, he just needs to practice.

He hopes she comes back. He hopes for it the same way the Carja look to the sky during an eclipse, with anticipation and reverence and a little bit of fear. Whatever brief scraps of her time she can grant him, he’s grateful to accept. He can’t change who she is, nor does he want to. He doesn’t know if she’ll come back. He doesn’t even know if she’s alive.

In the meantime, he’s Erend, captain of the Sun King’s Vanguard. He’s Ersa’s brother, a man who serves his tribe and his king. He aches for Ersa and he aches for a drink, and he aches for Aloy. He hadn’t realized that life threw punches all on its own, but despite the bruises, he’s learning to take the hit.

It’s sad, it’s hard and it’s _lonely_ , and the shadows are so much deeper than he wants them to be.

Maybe this is what’s on the other side of the flame, he thinks, after the moth has passed on through. It comes out singed and dark, but still alive. The flame is fickle, shivering and dancing, and the world changes because of its light. The moth doesn’t get to decide if it burns; it can only let go and accept its fate. Maybe it dies. Maybe it doesn’t. It can’t expect to choose.

It doesn’t feel like this should be okay, but it is. Somehow, this is the closest to okay that Erend has ever been.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be something else, but then I stumbled into doing The Queen's Gambit and hOLY SHIT WAS I UNPREPARED WHO THE HELL HAS TO FIGHT A THUNDERJAW RIGHT AFTER A ROCKBREAKER FOR FUCK'S SAKE and needless to say I got my ass well and thoroughly beaten. Thus, this.

The sky’s still dark, the barest hint of pale light on the horizon, when one of Marad’s agents bangs on Erend’s door. “Muster fifteen men,” the agent says. “Bring them to the northern gate. Plan for speed.”

He stumbles into his armor, heading to the tavern to round up the day crew. True to habit, they haven't even gone to bed. “I need the least drunk of you,” Erend says, and that earns him a laugh.

“Least drunk is _you_ , Cap,” Tandin observes, swaying on his bench.

“Me and fifteen others. Come on, you sloppy lot. Figure out who’s it.” He’s not annoyed; it’s far enough into the night that they’re sobering up anyhow. They’ll be good in an hour, and even if they aren’t, he’d bet a drunk Oseram against a sober Carja any day. He’s _been_ that drunk Oseram.

Well. It hasn't worked out for him, not the way he's been. He's still working on that, one hardscrabble day at a time.

When he’s got his men, they head to the northern gate to meet a contingent of Carja soldiers. Avad himself is there, dressed in light, anonymous traveling clothes. “We just got word that my brother is coming,” he says in greeting. “If we hurry, we can meet them in Brightmarket.”

“What?” If the Shadow Carja are invading, they’re going to need more than fifteen men, and even though Erend’s never shied away from a fight, he’d rather not face an army in half his armor-

“Nasadi and Itamen are defecting,” Marad clarifies. “They’re coming by boat.”

That changes _everything_.

Erend hasn’t been to Brightmarket in almost a year. It isn’t far - only three hours at a leisurely pace - and the path is well-travelled and heavily guarded, so the machine presence is minimal. The last time he’d come through here was on Ersa’s orders, investigating some bandit attacks in the western hills. The town hasn’t changed, still a collection of bright, smart sandbrick buildings surrounding a peaceful wharf. Meridian is the shining center of the Sundom, but Brightmarket is its own jewel, the dense jungle opening up onto clear blue water and smooth red canyon. It’s rained earlier in the night, and the clouds hang low over the buildings, the air damp and fresh.

Erend and his men barely have time to do a security sweep of the wharf when the boat coalesces through the mist. The defecting royals huddled together would be indistinguishable from every other ragged refugees except for the protective phalanx of bloodied defenders. Jiran’s widow clutches the terrified child to her chest, the pain of two hard years deeply etched into her face.

“Please forgive the casual assembly,” Avad says, immediately moving forward to help them up onto the dock. “We chose speed over formality. Your safety is assured.”

His step-mother looks too dazed to speak.

With the royals are a purple-robed handmaiden who is almost certainly one of Marad’s agents, two Carja soldiers, a grizzled mercenary, and-

“ _Aloy,_ ” Erend breathes, right after his lungs start working.

Her eyes flick toward him at the sound of her name. She’s wearing some kind of ill-fitting Carja armor, an ugly amalgamation of mismatched machine plating and poorly-tanned leather. Her hair is tucked under her headpiece, the wings of the visor almost completely obscuring her face. He can’t tell if she’s taken a few hard hits, or if the armor was scavenged off the one who did. There’s so much blood-

“I know you’ve had a harrowing journey,” Avad is saying, “but if we leave here now, you will be in Meridian before noon. There is no safer place in the entire Sundom.”

The handmaiden looks to the Queen, who nods tiredly. “We’ll go,” the handmaiden says. “Anything to put distance between us and the Branded Shore.”

“What was your pursuit?” Avad asks.

“Heavy,” the handmaiden says. “They won’t cross the water, but it’s best not to invite further action.”

Avad glances at Erend. “The Vanguard here will stay until we’re certain,” he says.

“This shore is ours,” Erend agrees automatically. “Nothing gets through us.” The blood isn't Aloy’s. Is it?

As she guides the Queen Consort and Itamen up the wharf, the handmaiden leans to Erend’s ear. “These two were invaluable in our escape.” She nods to the mercenary, curled in on himself in pain. “Huadiv requires medical attention. Can you ensure that he gets it?”

“We’ll get him fixed up,” Erend confirms. He motions to his men. “Tandin, Hagger, break up into patrols. Elko, coordinate with the Carja on lookout. Nyler, show this guy where the healer is.”

He’s the captain. He can delegate, and now that he’s delegated-

Aloy is holding herself as stiffly as he’s ever seen, and he’s barely started toward her when her hand is a crushing force on his forearm. “Get me out of here,” she grinds out, the words almost too low to hear. “Anywhere. Now.”

Confusion looms with alarm boiling at its edges, but Erend is a wall of muscle, and he knows how to use it. He puts his shoulder into the door of a nearby boathouse, scaring the piss out of the fishwife mending nets inside.

“Give us a moment,” he growls, and as an afterthought, “please.”

She nods too many times and darts away.  

Almost immediately, Aloy lurches toward the edge of the dock and throws up. Erend waits, balanced on the balls of his feet and mind blank with anxiety.

“Help me,” she says through clenched teeth, sinking onto a nearby crate. She tugs at her belt, her quiver and potion pouches falling to the deck. “ _Now."_

He’s not proud of how many times he’s imagined undressing her, but this is nothing like the moments in his head. He fumbles with the laces of the haphazard machine-plate pauldron, and then she makes a hard choking sound like she’s going to be sick again.

She’s unstrapped the heavy leather wrap around her waist, and as she peels it off her thigh, the acrid stench of metalburn rises up dense and unmistakable.

 _Fire and spit._   

All hesitation lost, he’s on his knees, carefully easing the bloody leather away from her skin. He’s trying not to hurt her - steel to his bones, he’s trying - but she still makes a strangled noise and bites down hard on her gauntlet. “Sorry,” he breathes, “I’m so sorry, I’ve almost-”

The last little bit comes away, taking skin with it, and then she _does_ scream into the bands of rope at her wrist, the noise barely muffled. Her free hand clutches at the edge of the crate, blood dripping down her other arm from where she’s bitten through the gauntlet to the flesh beneath.

It’s bad. Her legging is shredded, the leather sodden and sticky. Cloying metalburn swells up in his throat, and he turns away, trying to breathe through his mouth.

He has to ask. He _has_ to. “What happened?”

“So _much_ ,” she manages, and there are angry tears in her eyes. “Just _everything_ -”

“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“He was supposed to clear the pass.” She grabs at him with her free hand, her fingers sinking into his sleeve. “He _didn’t._ ”

The mercenary had been nursing a broken rib or busted arm, but he hadn’t looked too worse for wear. Erend pulls off his scarf and reaches down to dunk it in the water, setting the placid little skiff to rock in its berth. He presses the wet fabric to her leg, and almost yelps as her fingers contract on his shoulder in pain. He is going to kill the merc. He’s going to kill him slowly and deliberately and-

Aloy looks like she’s about to pass out, and there is a _lot_ of blood where it definitely isn’t supposed to be. He has to keep her talking. “Tell me what happened. He didn’t clear the pass.”

She takes a huge, shuddering breath. “Rockbreaker. Said he’d - _nngh_ \- softened it up for me-”

“Rockbreaker,” Erend repeats. Fire and spit, he's never even _seen_ one of the huge tunnelling machines.

“I got it,” she says.

“Of course you did.” He wonders if he can call for help, or just call for one of his men. “Kip,” he tries, pitching his voice toward the door in what is very nearly not a panicked yell. “Get in here!”

“Huadiv,” Aloy continues, swaying in place, “didn’t soften _anything_. Lost his whole crew. Nothing. I shot it. That’s all. Just me.”

“Stay with me,” Erend says, because she’s gray and suddenly damp with sweat. “Kip!”

His fellow Vanguardsman pokes his head in the door. “Cap-?” His eyes go wide. “ _Fire and spit-_ ”

“Healer,” Erend growls. “Now. Tell her to forget the merc.”

Kip’s already out the door.

“So you took down a Rockbreaker,” Erend says, and there’s no way she’s staying upright, so he lets her fall onto his shoulder, gently guiding her down to the deck. “Stay with me.” He swishes his scarf back in the water, very grateful for the protection of his thick gloves. She hisses as he presses the cloth back on her leg. “Rockbreaker did this?”

“Thunderjaw,” she offers.

“A Thunderjaw.” If anyone else were saying this, he'd say it was slag, but this is Aloy, tamer of machines and tracker of killers. “That before or after he didn’t clear the pass?”

Her eyelids flutter. “...after.”

“Aloy. Stay with me. The Thunderjaw was after.”

“Almost made it,” she says. “Too easy. Eclipse.”

“They had the Thunderjaw.” That explains the metalburn. He doesn't know how they managed to Corrupt a machine that big, and he doesn't want to find out.

“Had it down,” she croaks. “One last shot, and then its _tail_ -”

“Antidote,” he says, and reaches for her pouch.

“Gone.” She’s shivering despite the promise of the day’s heavy heat, breathing hard like she swam from the Branded Shore all on her own. “No more.”

He’s already fumbling for his own supply. “One more dose.”

“Had three…”

He’s not a healer, but he knows a thing or two. He’d had to, first fighting back during the Red Raids, and then in more organized combat during the liberation. Metalburn isn’t something they’d had to deal with much then. Any time they’d seen a Corrupted machine, they’d taken the fight elsewhere. Both sides had.

Still, he’s seen. Corruption injuries are bad. It’s called metalburn for a reason. Erend doesn’t know how it works, or even what it is, but he doesn’t have to. He just needs to know what to do.

It takes skin and turns it to jelly. He’s gotten splashed by the stuff only a few times, and it fucking _hurts._  Water washes it off, but by the time there’s water to use, there’s no skin left to use it on. Fire can be patted out; metalburn just ravenously eats.

Aloy’s leathers protected her from the worst of it, the metalburn seeping through only where the Thunderjaw’s tail slashed through the thickly tanned hide. He's only got one dose of antidote on his belt because this is his light kit, and he never _needs_ something to counteract metalburn, and _fire and spit,_ he's going to start carrying every blasted potion that’s ever been brewed-

“Got stupid,” she mumbles.

He can’t even imagine that. He pops the cork on the antidote, but she pushes it away from her mouth. Fine; if she won’t drink it, he can still put it to use, and he dribbles it along the length of the wound. “Those Carja - did they back you up?” They looked battered, but not in a way that suggests any kind of serious combat.

Furious tears welling up in her eyes, and her voice goes thick and small. “Every machine can kill a hunter, if she’s careless-”

“You are _not_ careless-”

“I wasn’t _watching!_ It was on the ground, and I-” She’s choking again, but this time, it’s because she’s _crying_.

Right now, right at this moment, she could ask him anything and he’d do it. Erend will do literally anything. He's going to kill the mercenary for not doing his job, he's going to kill the Carja soldiers who let her take their hits, he's going to kill the Nora for turning her out and away. He’s going to take down the entire blasted world, except right now he has a double handful of Aloy’s blood and he is very, very, very scared.

Abruptly, Kip is there with a disgruntled healer. “I have another patient, I keep telling you-” Her face immediately changes. “Metalburn.”

“She’s had three doses, and I just applied another,” Erend says, the words ejected from his mouth like a machine’s sharp footfalls.

“Might have just saved that leg,” the healer says, and claps her hands. “Can’t do anything in this dirty fishbarn. Let’s go.”

Aloy shoves herself up on her elbows, but she’s way too gray, and he feels like he’s going to pass out himself. “Made it here,” she grumbles, but raises an arm to let him heft her up.

She’s not small, but his heart is beating so hard, he could lift a Ravager and it would be nothing. Her head drops against his shoulder, and _why_ can’t they touch sometime when it’s good?

He’d been doing so well with his sobriety. There’s no way he’s making it through _this_.

The healer’s home is close. Her name is Mae, and her rooms are as spare and efficient as she is. “I can’t put freeze rime on this,” she says tersely. “Not if there’s going to be any skin left. I can stitch up the gash, but it’s going to have to be done dry.”

Aloy’s gritting her teeth so hard Erend is afraid she’ll crack one. “Do it.”

“Look,” he says in a spurt of inspiration, “the tavern - I’ll go get-”

“Not with all the antidote in her system,” the healer snaps. “You want to stop her heart?”

Fire and _spit,_  is he the only person in this room-

“Hold her still,” the healer says, and Aloy’s already unwrapping one of her leather gauntlets to bite down on.

This is going to be the worst thing he’s ever done.

Everything is blurring at the edges. They’re in bed, but not the way he’s wanted, and she’s leaning back against his chest, and this is _not at all_ how he’d hoped this would happen, and he thinks they’re okay, that maybe this will all be okay, but then the needle goes in and she _screams_ into the leather, her whole body convulsing-

“Hold her _still!_ ” the healer barks.

He’s brute force. He’s solid muscle. He can break through a door with his shoulder, and bludgeon a Watcher to its constituent pieces. He knows what it means to be strong. Strength is about stillness as much as it’s about movement, and right now, his job is to wrap his arms around her and _not move_ -

He hates it. Fire and spit, he _hates_ it. She’s fighting with every bit of her strength and trying just as hard not to, and the only thing he can do is press his face into her hair and say he’s sorry, he’s so sorry over and over and over until the word loses all meaning, and its shape is the only thing his throat has ever known.

 

****

 

He doesn’t remember when it’s over. He wakes up some hours later in a nearby chair. His mouth is as dry as the Gatelands, the sound of his own heartbeat throbbing in his head. His entire body aches.

Aloy is sprawled like a ragdoll in the bed, her breath slow and even. There’s a neat, clean bandage on her leg, damp with antiseptic herbs.

Everything is fine. Everything is going to be fine. She’s alive and she’s going to be okay, but he still can’t stop shaking. His head is swimming, the room buzzing in his ears. He lurches to the fireplace and pukes in the ashes.

“Erend.” He turns, and she twitches her fingers at him, barely awake. “Please.”

Every breath is a weight he almost can’t bear. He doesn’t know what she’s asking, so he does the only thing he’s physically capable of. There’s barely enough room on the bed for her by herself, and certainly not enough room for his own useless mass, but here he is.

She’s warm and she smells sharply of antidote and poultice. His face is damp and pressed into the wild mess of her hair. This isn’t at all how he’s wanted to feel the heat of her and breathe her in.

This is _nothing_ like he’s wanted it to be.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tag update, as this thing is going off the rails.

If he were a more intellectual man, he’d realize they’re slowly taming each other. Aloy is a wild animal, fearful of civilization by both instinct and experience. For his own part, Erend is an idiot drunk lurching through his life, the little success he enjoys due to sheer dumb luck.

The first time she stumbled into camp, she’d been fine. She’d just needed a place to regroup, and she said she’d be there, and she was. The second time, he’d gone out and found her half-dead in the snow, and somehow, there’s a kernel of truth in her brain that’s identified Erend with safety.

He isn’t safety. He’s not going to be good for her - he’s incompetent and messy and scared as hell, and trying so very hard _not_ to be - but it doesn’t matter. She’s here, a fire he can't stay away from, and all he knows is that they're both going to burn.  

 

*****

 

The Shadow Carja are not following.

Erend only knows because Tandin tells him. He’s not sure who’s been more thoroughly knocked on their ass - him or Aloy. The next day, she’s already out of bed and determinedly staggering around, and he’s locked in a nightmare migraine, his entire body in agonizing revolt.

He hurts, and she’s _angry_. He can feel it radiating off her like the day’s heat trapped in stone, but her jaw is set tight and she’s not talking.

In the meantime, he’s trying to be the captain. He’s trying to do what Ersa would do. He talks to Tandin about the patrols, and he meets with his Carja counterpart. The Daybrink stretches between Brightmarket and the Branded Shore as calm as a lady’s looking-glass, the water a perfect reflection of the cloudless sky above. There are Snapmaws on one of the far islands, but even they are relaxed, only rearing up to puff ice at the occasional unlucky goose that gets too close.

“What do you think, Cap?” Elko asks, toying with the spyglass in his hands. “Not even a rat over there.”

“We hold the shore,” Erend says. One of Marad’s agents in Brightmarket came in the early evening to report Nasadi and Itamen were safely inside Meridian’s walls, and no movement had been noticed along any of the other borders. Still, the spymaster was nervous, and Erend is too. He agrees with Marad’s assessment that the Vanguard contingent should stay in Brightmarket for a week at least.

His agreement _definitely_ has nothing to do with a certain red-haired Nora brave.

The Carja mercenary disappeared as soon as the healer set his broken arm, and Erend is furiously disappointed. He’s still entertaining lurid fantasies that involve slow, deliberate torture, and Aloy’s clotted frustration is only making the situation worse.

They avoid each other. It’s not something they’ve agreed on, but it’s definitely happening. She scalds him with her presence, and even knowing they're in the same town snaps every muscle in his body to painful alert. The only reprieve is after the evening meal; he finds himself sitting on the wharf’s edge, and like a wary fox, Aloy appears a few feet away, stretching out her injured leg. He sharpens his axe. She skins the bark off edgewood branches destined to become arrows.

He’s struggling. His arms and chest are purple with bruises, and every time he takes a breath, he can still feel himself holding her down. He doesn’t want to hurt her, but he _did_. He’d needed to, and because he had, not a full day later she's healing well, she’s _fine,_  but he can’t look at her without the burning urge to puke.

Erend is his father’s son. He’s tried to be more than this. _Ersa_ tried to make him more than this. He’ll always be an idiot drunk even if he’s trying not to drink, but the logical extension in knowing how to take a hit is knowing how to _land_ a hit, and on top of everything, he’s a soldier. Violence is inescapably folded into his steel, and he’s _known_ that. He’s accepted it.

He’d just assumed he’d managed to forge it into something useful, something helpful, and he’s suddenly, absolutely terrified he _hasn’t._

He needs Ersa. He needs her moderating influence. He needs her to reassure him that he’s not the monster he’s so afraid of becoming, but she’s gone, and he doesn’t trust his own judgement. He’d been wrong when he’d thought he was managing his alcohol. He _needs_ to be wrong about this.

 _Help me, Ersa_ , he says desperately, but the ghost in his head doesn't answer.

He finally looks at Aloy. “You’re okay, right?” It’s the only way he can ask, without vomiting out too many emotions and too much context.

She scowls at her leg. “I don’t have _time_ for this.”

He’s only halfway talking about her leg, but it feels too much like the desperation of an addict to pursue the matter. Not when she’s fixated on her mysterious, all-consuming schedule. “It’s barely been a day.”

“It shouldn’t have happened in the first place.” She shakes her head. “I thought it was down. I should have made _sure._ ”

Fire and spit, she’s as hard as Ersa ever was. “You can’t be serious. It was a fucking Rockbreaker, and then a Corrupted _Thunderjaw_. Give yourself a break.”

“You’re one to talk,” she grumbles, and well, yes - she has a point, but he’s so on edge and raw that it hits him right in the gut and he almost snaps his axe in half.

“ _Y_ _ou’re_ the one who only shows up when you’re bleeding,” he hears himself say.

“I didn’t know you’d be here!”

“ _Royals_ , Aloy. Defecting royals. The Sun King in Shadow. Of course Avad would meet them, and where _else_ am I gonna be?”

“I didn’t want to do this,” she hisses. “All I wanted to do was get to Sunfall and get into the- into where I was going to go, and then I got tangled up in _this_ -”

He can’t believe what he’s hearing. “You just _stumbled_ into an event that might stop the civil war?”

“None of this _involves_ me, but here I am-”

“Of course it involves you-”

“It _doesn’t_ -”

“You’re part of this world-”

“This world keeps making sure I’m not welcome!”

The words ring like a thunderclap across the wharf.

He wants to assure her she belongs. He wants to tell her how vital she is, but he's the bleeding edge of a ragged wound, and her tone slices him open like a beast.

It’s raw anger and furious pain. It’s an animal chewing its own leg to get out of a trap. He knows that hurt. He knows that fear. He knows what it’s like to be stuck somewhere with no hope of escape.

He _knows_ , and he’s tried to drown himself to forget. He’s done _so well_ at drowning himself, but then Ersa was murdered, and Aloy exploded into his life, and then he’d had to _hold her down,_  and all of a sudden, old welds are catastrophically failing.

He’s not prepared for this. He’s not prepared at all. He’d been almost okay. He’d accepted that he’s captive to Aloy’s flame regardless of what either of them want. He’d been settling into it, carefully folding it into his identity. Then, she’d shown up on the barge from the Branded Shore, bursting back into his life like a Stalker to tear right into his most vulnerable parts. His brain had gone blank with panic, and then he’d had to _hold her down-_

His entire body hurts. His hands are clenched so tightly on the haft of his axe that his knuckles are white, but his muscles won’t respond so he can’t let go. His lungs are two swollen bladders ponderous and heavy in his chest. This is worse than even his worst binge. It’s _terrifying_ , but there’s nothing he can do but wait it out and hope he doesn’t die.

He’s seen her kill pacified machines out of mercy. Maybe, if he’s lucky, she’ll do the same for him.

Belatedly, he realizes she’s staring at him, nostrils flared with an anger that’s irritably being pushed aside. “Erend?”

It’s impossible to breathe in a blast furnace. There’s no air-

He gets up and leaves. He’s not sure how he can move when _he can’t move,_  but before he can process it, he’s gone.

 

****

 

He's the younger brother. He's the one Ersa had to constantly grab by the collar and drag out of one mess or another. He's the one who’s never lived up to expectations.

_No, idiot. I didn't bring you along because I didn't want you to get hurt._

He's not fragile. He's proven that over and over again. He's brute force. He's solid muscle. He knows how to take a hit, and she'd still tried to protect him.

Fire and spit, _why?_

“Cap?” Erend has somehow strayed toward the tavern. Four of his men are there, comfortably settled into their cups for the evening. Elko eyes him, unsure. “You...gonna join us?”

“Woman trouble,” theorizes Nyler into his foam.

He can't punch his own men. He absolutely can't, no matter how hot and wild the urge. Aloy isn't his to defend, and he has to control himself, because he’s the captain. He’s Ersa’s heir, and she would _never-_

They see it in his face anyway, and he _hates_ himself.

_Incompetent._

He buys a bottle from the innkeeper. He gets three steps away from the counter, and then swings around to purchase a second, offering his most charming smile with his shards. He knows exactly what he's doing, and he knows exactly how this is going to end. This is a series of bad decisions, and he's going to continue making every single one despite a keen awareness of the consequences.

Stupid _. Stupid._

 

****

 

He drinks. Of course he does. He's his father's son, his sister's idiot brother, and he has no one left to pull him out.

He stays drunk. It used to be comfortable, if not pleasant, but now his sloppiness grates at his own skin. He’s in Brightmarket. Aloy’s in Brightmarket. He’s pretty sure it’s the longest they’ve been in the same town since Pitchcliff. He’d made his peace, but now, that peace is shattered, and he has absolutely no idea what to do. He’s very aware he’s not handling it well, but...he doesn’t know what handling it well would look like.

 _No more playing around_.

None of this feels like a game. It feels dark and it feels desperate, and he’s pretty sure he’s spiralling out of control like a downed Stormbird. Intellectually, he knows what he needs to do - stop fucking drinking, for one - but knowing it and _doing_ it are different sides of the Daybrink, and he can’t make himself swim.

Seven months of sobriety, splattered in the dust along with his liquid breakfast.

This isn’t a vacation. This is his _duty._ The political structure of the entire region has just abruptly, irrevocably shifted. He can _see_ the fires from Shadow Carja sentries across the water. An invasion would be _nothing,_ and he’s slogging through his patrol with eyes that barely focus.

_Your king needs you._

No one has needed Erend. He’s dead weight. He’s a useless drunk. He’d promised Ersa he’d grow up, and he _hasn’t._

Incompetent. _So_ incompetent.

He tells his men to pack it in for the night. By the looks on their faces, he’s fooling no one, but Erend settles himself on the watchtower, a bottle tucked into his gambeson. The sun slides into the west, the Daybrink gone bloody and still. He nurses his drink, staring sullenly across at the Branded Shore and the nothing it reveals. He doesn’t know what’s going on in Sunfall. He wonders if Marad knows.

Erend doesn’t particularly _care._

He’s deeply mired in the cloying familiarity of self-loathing when Aloy finds him. “I see you haven’t fallen out,” she says, with a pointed glance at the wide, open windows.

“Not yet,” he says, and takes a swig.

She huffs, and lowers herself to the floor, wincing as she stretches her leg. It’s been two days - or three? He’s lost count - and when he’s been coherent enough to listen, the buzz around town is that she’s helped a shopkeeper stop a thief. The bandage on her leg is still damp with herbal poultices, and she’s being twice as useful as Erend on his best days.

He doesn’t deserve a second of her time.

“What’s this going to solve, Erend?” she asks quietly. “How is this helping?”

“I don’t need a lecture,” he says. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” He gestures to the horizon with the bottle. “Some big, important thing you’ve got to be doing?”

She crosses her arms. “Trust me, this is not my first choice.”

“What are you even _doing_ here?”

“I’m in Brightmarket because I can’t walk more than ten feet without falling on my face,” she snaps. “I’m up _here_ because you’re being an idiot.”

“I…” Fire and spit, his eyes _aren’t_ welling up. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“That makes two of us,” she retorts.

Frustration ignites like the light in her hair. “Will you just...let me do this?”

She snorts.

“I want this.” He doesn’t. He really, really doesn’t. He just doesn’t know how else to be. “Leave me alone, okay?”

“What would Ersa say?” she shoots back.

She has _no right_ to throw Ersa’s name in his face. “Fuck off, Aloy.”

Her nostrils flare. “Fine.” There’s a heavy pause. “Actually, no, I won’t. My leg hurts and I don’t want to move.”

He waves the bottle. “Stay...go. Doesn’t matter. You’re gonna do whatever you’re gonna do anyway.”

“You’re a lot more pleasant when you’re sober,” she grumbles.

Silence settles between them, awkward and thick. If he were better at this, he’d take his time with his drink, savoring each burning mouthful; he’s not better. He takes short, messy swigs, chasing the pain in his chest. Every swallow feels like it might be the one to finally numb the aching lump in his ribs, the one to open up his lungs to clarity and night air. Every swallow is both a hope and a disappointment: he might get there, maybe this time, maybe this one, or the next or the one after that, but he knows he won’t. He never does.

_No more playing around._

Aloy sits, as still as the Daybrink stretched out around them. Across the water, fires flicker in the Shadow Carja outpost. This should be romantic, he thinks, the two of them sitting here at dusk. Swallows dart at the edge of the shore, swooping down to catch the insects lazily bobbing just above the water’s surface. A flock of geese land noisily at the wharf, honking like grumpy old men as they establish themselves amid the pylons.

The world is so fucking _beautiful_ , laid out in front of him like a tapestry, and he’s shoving his face in a bottle.

“The worst part is that I was so close,” Aloy says quietly. “I was _in_ Sunfall, and now I have to go all the way back.”

All his blood abruptly plummets to his feet, his brain sucked into itself like a starving bellows. “You _don’t_ -”

“I do.”

“Aloy…” He flounders, his drunk brain so rusting _inadequate_ for what he wants to say. He doesn’t know how to explain it. He doesn’t have the vocabulary for it, but before he can stop himself, his mouth is moving anyway. She's going to go. Of course she is. “Will you at least...send me something? Anything? Just a letter or- or a message?”

She frowns, uncertain. “I’m doing what I need to do.”

“I _know_ that, and- fire and spit, I don’t care _what_ you’re doing, I just…” He takes a huge, shuddery breath. “I just need to know you’re alive, okay?”

“Why?” It’s such an Aloy question, said with a mixture of frank skepticism and wary disbelief.

“I don’t _know_ why,” he snaps. “Look, you’re going to do whatever it is you need to do, and I’m not a part of that. I get it. I’m not. But what I’m trying to say is that I _miss_ you, and I keep missing you, and if there’s a day where you don’t come back...that’s gonna be a hard day. That’s gonna be...” He swirls the last bit of liquor around the bottom of the bottle, watching the alcohol as it crawls back down the glass.  “I have no claim on you. I wouldn’t even pretend to. I just...i just need to know you’re alright.”

Aloy is silent.

He's too drunk for this, and he is just drunk enough, and this is a terrible, terrible idea. His mouth is running away from his brain, and he desperately wants to shove the words back down his throat, but he thinks he'd puke if he tried.

He should apologize. He should throw himself out the window. He should go back to pretending he doesn't have an unhealthy obsession with a blinding, flame-haired Nora brave.

She swallows, and belatedly, he realizes that she genuinely has no idea what to say. Being Aloy, though, she forges ahead anyway. “You _shouldn't._ ”

It's not what he’s expecting, but it's _exactly_ what he's expecting. “I _know,_ ” he says miserably. “Look - forget I said anything. I'm drunk. It doesn't mean anything.”

That's absolutely the wrong thing to say, because her face crumbles in a way he does _not_ expect and it feels like getting punched in the chest. “Why do you keep doing that?” she demands. “Either say what you mean, or don't say it at all.”

He _can't_. He can't say that she's burning him up and he can't keep his mouth shut. He’s an idiot, he's _so fucking stupid_ \- “I just- from the moment we met, you’ve been the brightest spot in the world, and every time you come back, it's _worse_ , and l feel like I get closer and closer to losing you, and _fire and spit_ -” He scrubs his hands through his hair, the phantom hot slick of her blood burning on his skin. “I lost Ersa, and now you-”

“I’m not Ersa,” she points out.

“I know you’re not,” he says. “I don't deserve a minute of your time, but steel to my soul, Aloy: you’re the closest thing to a friend I have in this world.”

The words hang between them. He drains the bottle, but it's not enough. “Moths,” he adds, because it makes _so much sense_ , and she needs to _know_ -

It doesn't have the intended effect. She chokes a little, a small bubble of hysterical disbelief. “Erend…”

“Aloy,” he says. Her name feels good in his mouth.

She looks like she's about to say something else, but she just shakes her head. “If we're friends,” she says slowly, “why are you drunk right now?”

The Carja say there are no shadows at noon, and he _understands._  Aloy finds answers. She isn’t gentle. She is the flash of mining explosive and the shockwave that follows. She clears away the dross and delves straight to the core without hesitation.

“I _hurt_ you,” he says.

She squints. “What are you talking about?”

His hands spasm without meaning. “The...thing...with the healer…”

“That was a Thunderjaw,” she says, like he’s stupid. “How much have you _had?_ ”

“After,” he tries. “When she…” More useless hand flopping.

“She stitched me up. You helped.” Her lips twist. “I...didn’t say thank you for that. So - thanks.”

No. No no no. This is the _opposite_ of what should be happening. “I hurt you,” he repeats. “I held you _down-_ ”

“That was the point,” she says.

“I _don’t_ -” but he can’t say it. He can’t get the words out because she’s staring at him, resolute and stubborn, and her eyes are copper ore, hidden green veined with perfect brown. She’s a blaze of light and heat. She’s bright and burning, a flame in the darkness, and that’s what she’s been from the moment he’d met her. He’d sidled up to Olin, and been blindsided.

She's going to leave. She's going to leave, and he's never going to see her again, and the demons in his head aren't her burden to bear.

“It wasn't something I wanted to do,” he makes himself say. “I don't- I don't have an excuse for myself.”

“You looked better in Meridian,” she says quietly.

He’d _been_ better. He'd - foolishly - thought he'd beaten the bad blood of his clan. He'd thought he'd been proud, but he'd just been stupid. He'd been arrogant, and now it's laid him out flat.

Aloy lays him out flat. Every time he sees her, something else gets knocked loose in the smoldering slag heap of his brain, and he’s left scrambling. Maybe she doesn't understand about the moths, but that's because she's the flame: it's not up to her how he reacts. He might not have any control, but she’s steady and resolute. She hasn't moved an inch, and if he burns, it has nothing to do with her. It's his own mad desire to turn himself to ash.

“Do I need to worry about you?” she asks quietly, an echo of the conversation they'd had in Red Ridge Pass. He'd been trying not to be a sodden, incompetent bung then, too.

“Probably,” he admits. “It'd make two of us.”

Her lips thin, and fire and spit, the hard ache in his chest presses up against his eyes. She is the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, a wild blaze of light and heat. She’s a firestorm that scours him down to his core, and he's absolutely terrified of what that’s going to reveal.

“Will you promise me that's the last one?” she asks, with a significant glance at the empty bottle.

“Can't,” he says honestly. He hates himself for it, but it's the truth.

She deserves the truth. He deserves nothing.


	10. Chapter 10

By the time Nyler comes to relieve him on watch, the sky's thick and dark, and Erend’s hit the nauseous liminal space between drunk and hungover. Aloy dozes nearby, stretched out on the floor with her hands folded on her stomach.

“Captain?” the Vanguardsman asks hesitantly. “Reporting in.”

“All quiet,” Erend confirms. He's expecting to puke when he stands - either that or fall on his ass - and is pleasantly surprised to do neither. “Snapjaws moved further out, but the Shadow Carja stayed put.”

Nyler looks only slightly more at ease.

He's not looking forward to four flights of stairs. “Aloy, you staying?” It's a presumption he doesn't want to make, but fire and spit, he wants to be wrapped up in the bright, herbal warmth of her hair. He wants her to put her hand on his scalp and dig her nails into his skin the way she'd done the day Ersa died.

He wants to get lost in her, because right now he can't stand to be himself, but asking her to be his cover is a conversation he does _not_ want to have. Not when she’s constantly hovering on the edge of his life, her gaze out and away. He can't ask that of her. He doesn't deserve it, and neither does she.

“Might rappel down,” she says sleepily.

He snorts, picturing her dropping down on the bored Carja guards below like a Glinthawk. “I'd pay good shards to see that.”

In the end, they take the stairs, leaning on each other like some awkward, ungainly beast. She makes a show of being self-sufficient until they're out of Nyler’s earshot, and then she's limping hard, hissing with every step.

“Why do you do that?” he asks, because he’s an asshole. “Pretend you're okay when you're not?”

“You tell me,” she snaps, and yeah, fair point.

“Look at us,” he says, as they get to a landing. She stops to breathe heavily through her nose. He stops because his eyes barely focus. “What a mess, huh?”

“Don't,” she says. “Just - don’t.”

They get downstairs. The Vanguard are set up in rooms at the inn; as the captain, he's warranted his own, which while pleasantly private has also allowed him to drink himself blind without anyone watching. He doesn't know where Aloy is sleeping.

She gets him to the foot of the stairs to his room, and stops. “Well...goodnight.” Something small and worried shivers beneath her frown of disapproval. “No more.”

“Don't have any up there,” he says honestly.

She nods once, curtly.

Fire and spit. She’s irritable from pain, and he wants to take care of her. He wants to do whatever it takes to ease the lines on her forehead. He wants to lay her down and tuck himself into her hair. He wants to press his lips to her eyelids and then to the rusty freckles on her nose.

He wants to see how far down those freckles go, and he's still drunk enough that he should not be wanting that. His body will take that passing thought and ignite like a beacon, blazing and mortified.

 _Inconsiderate_. _Stupid._

He stumbles up the stairs before he can make more of an ass of himself.

When he's collapsed in bed, the door safely locked, he lets himself think of Talanah, of leaning into her mouth in the darkness. He remembers wanting her to be Aloy, wanting her to be someone he doesn't feel he has a right to want. He'd let himself use someone who was using him herself, and even though it had been consensual and very, very pleasurable, it hadn't been satisfying. He doesn't remember that night with anything other than crawling discomfort.

He thinks of Dervahl, and wonders with a shudder of dread if this is how that murdering bung felt about Ersa before he'd killed her. He wonders if Dervahl turned his sister over and over in his mind-

Erend wonders if that's the obvious end to this, that he'll go crazy and-

He’d _held Aloy down-_

He’s his father's son-

He does throw up then, and if he makes it to the bucket, it's only because he’s had way too many years of practice.

 

****

 

It's been months since he's detoxed this hard, but Erend is brute force. He's good at muscling through. He can handle pain. He has no choice about being his father's son, but as Ersa pointed out again and again, he doesn't have to _become_ his father.

He wonders if he'll ever get to a point where the perennial anxiety melts away, and he can look around at his life and see something other than the cloying ghosts of a failed man. He wonders if it gets easier.

He’s starting to suspect it doesn't. If he's honest, being drunk was never comfortable; it was just familiar. His challenge now - what should have been the challenge all along - is to make sobriety the thing that's uncomfortably familiar.

_No more playing around._

It's going to hurt. It hurts _right now,_ as he walks his patrol with a splitting headache and his stomach lurking in the back of his throat, but he's good at taking a hit. He's just always been better at taking the hit from someone else.

_You're gonna have to grow up fast._

He'd sort of thought growing up was a fixed point, a solid demarcation between two ways of being. He'd grow up, and then that's what he'd be. He hadn't understood it was an endless process, as endless as the pursuit of sobriety.

Fire and spit, he feels like he's _way_ too old to be figuring this out.

 

****

 

Aloy disappears for a full day, and Erend is seized by the terrible conviction that she's left and not said goodbye. He throws himself into calisthenics, taking the shaking nausea of the detox and pummeling himself with it.

He's lying in bed in his room at the inn, the taste of bile heavy in his mouth as he weighs the strength of his hangover versus the inevitable, crushing sense of failure if he goes downstairs and gets a bottle, when something makes a small _tock_ at the window. It doesn't register as anything until it happens a second time.

He lurches to the window and stares into the dark. It takes a moment, but then his body is already moving towards the door, because it’s Aloy, her slingshot in her hand, and she looks _awful,_  small and fierce and clenched.

He's not drunk. He hurts like hell, but he’s as sober as he's been since the day she arrived. He almost trips over his own feet on his way down the stairs, and then he’s touching her before he can stop himself, his hands ghosting over her hair, her face, her shoulders. “You alright? You okay?”

He can't tell if she's bleeding. There's blood _on_ her, but it doesn't seem like it's hers. His throat closes in on itself, because he can't hold her down again, he _can't-_

“I'm fine,” she says. “Erend, I'm fine.”

She doesn't _look_ fine. Her fingernails are deep into his arm, sharp little slices that he can't ignore. In the flickering torchlight, her hair is thick, damp coils-

“You're _soaked,_ ” he blurts.

“Had a swim,” she says, and then the implication of her wet hair and the battered Shadow Carja armor connect like a fist to his face.

“You went back,” he breathes, and he's suddenly a roiling mix of anger, blinding terror, and a sharp relief he didn't know he needed to be feeling. “You _came_ back.” It's not that far to Sunfall, but it's more than a day, and even Aloy on one of her inexplicable mounts-

“Just across the water,” she says.

“I didn't see your boat,” he says stupidly. He's been on watch, and when he hasn't, one of his men has stood in his place, and a boat crossing the Daybrink would warrant a huge uproar-

Except no one saw, and the nearest bridge crossing is hours away.

She _swam-_

His brain is sparking like a downed Watcher. He doesn't understand how or why. He hadn't expected her to come back this time, not really, and he can't fathom why she's come back to _him,_  when he's been such a drunken sot.

“Are you okay?” he asks again, because it's the only thing he can think of.

“I had to help.” She hesitates. “Can we talk?”

He can't say yes fast enough.

She's limping hard, so they end up sitting at one of the tables outside the inn, tucked into the shadows by the creek. “Ales?” the serving girl asks.

Erend wants one. He wants ten. “Tea,” he says instead.

The night air is heavy and thick with moisture, but the clouds haven't given up their rain. Glowbugs dance lazily in the tall grass across the creek, and in the distance, a herd of Striders meanders at the edge of the jungle, their lenses calm and blue.

The tea comes in squat earthenware. It's sharply herbal with a sweet afterglow, astringent enough that Erend instinctively slugs it back, and then sits awkwardly with his empty cup. Aloy folds her hands around hers, as if she's leaching the heat from it despite the swelter of the evening.

Erend swallows. “So…?” Her hair is a thick, wet mat. He wants to get her a towel. “I should've asked: do you, uh, need to get changed?”

She shakes her head. “Is it always this humid?”

“Only during the rainy season.” This is Aloy. She'll shake someone down for information, but she's never going to admit to needing something she can't provide herself. “Hang on.”

He goes to his room and grabs the light blanket from the bed, his pulse pounding in the meat of his tongue. “Here,” Erend says, coming back to the table.

“It's really warm,” she says doubtfully, ever the Nora from the chilly Embrace, but she still takes the blanket and tucks it around her legs.

They sit in silence. Aloy sips at her tea as Erend considers his empty cup and tries not to stare at the fresh bruise high on her cheek.

Finally, he can't hold it in any longer. “You _swam._ By the forge, _why_?”

She licks her lips, and then hits him with as forthright a sucker punch as she's ever delivered. "Was Ersa your only family?”

“My only family?” He's suddenly somewhere distant from his body, and in the absence of control, he hears himself take on the usual guise of ever-charming lout. “What, you looking for a more handsome brother?”

She waits, unblinking. In a different conversation, she might just be unimpressed, but there's a hungry sadness in her gaze that evaporates his bluster.

“No,” he makes himself admit, crawling back into himself. “...but she's the only part that's ever mattered.”

“No one else?” She chews on the question. “No one back in Meridian?”

“You know there's no one,” Erend says, and then, like he's choking up a hard clot of blood, “Who'd be with a drunken bung like me?”

“You're more than that,” she says fiercely.

“You make me want to be." Fire and spit, he doesn't talk this way, but he _is,_  and it's _true,_ every word of it. Aloy takes whatever ugly pieces of him exist and somehow assembles them into an Erend that says impossible things, an Erend who is more honest than any Erend who's ever been.

She's still fighting the same clenched sadness, and if she's pounding at his steel, he’s raw enough that maybe he can do the same. “Aloy, talk to me,” he says quietly. “Please.”

The story comes out. Her voice is steady, but her knuckles are white as she grips her mug of tea. There's a Carja girl and a dead Shadow Carja soldier, and Aloy doesn't mention the massacre at her Proving, but he feels the weight of her beloved dead anyway.

She doesn't say that she's looking for a human connection. She doesn't say that she's more affected than she lets on, and maybe she doesn't even see it in herself. Erend only sees it because he can feel the visceral grief deep in his own gut.

He thinks of Ersa’s last breath, and the stain of shock wax on Aloy’s lips.

He doesn't ask if she's okay. He doesn't need to.


	11. Chapter 11

There's a noble girl in Brightmarket mourning her lover, and Aloy sits across the table from Erend, leaning on an elbow with one hand fisted in her damp hair. She stares into her tea, unfocused and miserable.

He doesn't have anything productive or helpful to say, so he doesn't say anything at all. He’s not good with words, and she deserves a kind of comfort he doesn’t trust himself to give. He’s a useless drunk, a ham-handed speaker even at the best of times, and right now, he’s so very far from his best.

He doesn’t deserve her time. He doesn’t deserve to be the one sitting across from her. Wildly, he wonders if she’s here because she thinks doesn’t have anyone else to turn to. She grew up outcast, so maybe she thinks he’s the best she can have, and the painful irony claws at his chest. He’s the bottom of the barrel when it comes to these things, and she deserves so, so much more.

“Captain!” The greeting rings across the inn’s courtyard, and Tandin waves from the road. He's got five other Vanguardsmen with him, heading up to the wharf to relieve the watch. “Hey - hi, Aloy!”

After a brief hitch of hesitation, she waves back, the movement halting and odd.

He swallows back the urge to crush his cup. Every time he manages to forget she'd been raised outcast, some little thing brings the reality crumpling back down. She waves like it's a motion she's not sure how to use, like she can't trust she's the intended recipient, and it _kills_ him.

Erend wants to take her out into a field and stand on the other side, waving at her until she’s laughing at the ridiculousness of it. He wants to wave at her until she understands that she's so very, very wanted.

He wants her to sit right here in front of him until he can figure out the right words to chase the tension from her body, but he isn't the kind of man who's good with words; they'd both end up sitting here until they’ve gone to bones and dust.

Aloy turns her head towards him “...have you ever known someone who makes you feel alive?” The question should be whispered or coy, but all he can hear is a heavy blanket of sadness.

It’s Aloy’s mouth, but somehow, he knows it’s the Carja girl’s words. “Yeah,” Erend says, and he wants _so badly_ to grab her hands, to drag her up into her own light and tell her to her face that she’s the flame, she’s the sun, she’s everything that makes his heart beat and blood sing. He wants to shout her name from the rooftops, to extol her beauty and her strength. He wants to explain the fire and the moth and how so grateful he is to burn, but it all gets caught in his throat and he suddenly can’t breathe.

“Of course you have,” Aloy mutters. “Everyone has.”

“No,” he says, because he means _no, not everyone does, and I’ve never felt it until you: it’s you, it’s always been you, it’s been you since the day we met_ , _how can you not know,_ but he’s not saying it badly, he’s not even fucking _saying_ it, and his entire body is screaming in rage.

“She said she was dead without him,” Aloy goes on, more to her cup than to anyone present. “And she asked me-” She cuts herself off, abruptly sitting up and shaking her head as if to clear it. “Doesn’t matter.”

“It _matters_ ,” he tries. “It _does_ -”

“I shouldn’t have bothered you,” she snaps. “I should have just...I have to go.”

“ _No_ -” and he’s as close to sheer panic as he’s ever gotten, because even if he didn’t know where she intends to go, the stony set of her jaw would tell him everything. If she goes to Sunfall, she might not come back, and if she leaves _right now_ , with heartache boiling off her like metalburn off a Corrupted machine, she’s _definitely_ not coming back-

“Aloy,” he says desperately, and grabs at her wrist as she lurches to her feet. The contact startles her - of course it does, he’s stupid, he’s _so_ stupid - but there’s some kind of luck left in this world, because she doesn’t immediately break his arm. “Please,” he says quietly. “ _Please_. Just - stay. At least, um-” he’s scrambling for a reason she’ll accept, “at least until you dry?”

Warily, she sits back down. “Shouldn’t you be on watch?”

He’s stone sober, but his heart is beating so fast he feels like he’s going to throw up anyway. “Not my night.”

“I shouldn’t have woken you up.”

“Wasn’t asleep.”

Aloy raises an eyebrow, and fire and spit, she always slices right through him. “Sober,” he says, and then because she’s still staring at him, “Look at me. Do I look sober?”

“You look terrible,” she says, as subtle as ever.

“That’s sober for you.” He wouldn’t even _be_ sober if it weren’t for her, but because he’s sober, he’s lost the looseness that would let him tell her these things.  

If he were drunk, he could let his body lean conspiratorially toward hers. If he was drunk, his head would loll a little on his neck, and he’d be easy and charming, and he could say everything she needs to hear. _I was dead_ , he’d be able to say. _I know what that feels like, to be caught in a great black nothing and not know how to get out, and from the moment we met, you’re the brightest thing I’ve ever seen. I need you more than I’ve ever needed anything. I’m the moth and you’re the flame, and there’s nothing I’ve ever done that’s as important as letting you burn the darkness out of my worthless skin._

He can’t say it. He’s too fucking sober, and the words are thick and clotted in his throat. Fire and spit, she needs to hear what he wants to say, especially when she’s wavering in front of him like a dying candle, but he’s a useless bung locked in the rictus of sobriety. “If that kid had a signal fire, we should have seen it,” he says instead, because he’s an asshole.

Incompetent when he’s drunk, incompetent when he’s sober. Of course he is. What else could he expect?

Aloy shakes her head. “It was on the beach. It wouldn't have looked like anything from here.”

Nothing looks like anything from here. Olin hadn't looked like a traitor, but he led the Eclipse to Aloy’s Proving. The corpse brought back from Red Ridge Pass hadn’t looked like anything but Ersa’s, but she’d still been alive. Aloy’s spear doesn’t look like anything special, but it lets her pacify a machine in a way that shouldn’t be possible. Aloy herself had just looked like a pretty girl in the middle of nowhere, and it _kills_ him how wrong he’d been.

Erend has been so very, very, very wrong about everything.

She sees things that no one else can. She sees them with her little jewel, and she sees them with her eyes. She takes whatever the world gives her and makes sense of it in ways that Erend is only starting to comprehend. She knows where she’s going, and she knows what she has to do. She burns with constant certainty, even if right at this second, he can see her flame guttering dangerously across the table.

She’s not going to talk about the Carja girl. He can’t ask, and even if he could, he’s an incompetent bung who isn’t physically capable of saying what he needs her to hear.

He needs a new approach, because she’s sitting here smoldering and damp, and he wants her to stay here more than he’s ever wanted a drink. He’s not a tactician, and she’s light and heat and everything a stupid moth could ever crave. By the forge, he has to _try_.

“Will you tell me what you're looking for?” Erend asks, heart in his mouth. “You don't have to, but...I'm here if you want. You said the Ancients and the Derangement, but...what’s it all mean?” The Ancients are just that, and the Derangement has been creeping into machines for fifteen years. Aloy pulls hard at the ties of civilization like she's running out of time, and maybe she is; the Eclipse is after her, but he doesn't understand _why,_  or how the veins all flow together, or why she can’t just stay in Meridian, safe and unharmed.

He wants to think he could protect her, but if that were possible, she wouldn’t be who she is, and he wouldn’t need her as much as he does.

She regards him, expression inscrutable.

“Look, I'm a big, useless drunk,” he admits. “You know that. You've seen it.” Fire and spit, he has to do this. He owes her. He _owes_ her. “Look, there's no one else I-” _want to impress-_ “talk to. You don't have to trust me. Hell, maybe you _shouldn't_ , but… if I run my mouth, it's nothing but slag. Steel to my bones, anything you tell me won’t go anywhere.”

It won’t have anywhere else to go. Even if he tried, no one would bother to listen.

“You're not useless,” she says quietly.

“Then _use_ me, dammit!” He swallows. “Please.”

Her lips thin, and for a long time, she doesn't say anything. The serving girl comes back with fresh tea, and Erend passes her a few extra shards. The other tables are starting to empty, their drunken inhabitants staggering towards home; the amateur band of farmhand minstrels is packing up their instruments, just as inebriated as the audience. In the distance, the Striders at the edge of the jungle amble into the underbrush.

Finally, Aloy takes the glowing trinket from her temple and carefully sets it down on the table between them. “Doors open for me,” she says. “They think I’m her.”

“They think you're who?” Erend remembers Olin and the conversation they'd had in Mainspring.

_Looked just like her. No way it can't be._

“Elisabet Sobek,” Aloy says, the strange name strong and easy on her tongue. “The world before - she tried to save it. She made some kind of superweapon, and I need to find out how it works. I need to figure out what she did.”

“The world is fine,” Erend says, because how could it not be? The nobles constantly cry about the downfall of civilization, but there’s still air. There’s still water. The sun hasn’t gone dark.

“It _isn’t_ ,” Aloy insists. “But I think I can fix it; I just have to find out how.”

“Okay, so you can fix it.” It sounds impossible, but this is Aloy, the impossibly bright light. Aloy, taming machines and tracking killers, all before breakfast. “Who's this Elisabet, and how can she help?”

“I thought she was my mother,” Aloy says, and _there_ , there it is- “but she was one of the Ancient Ones. Whatever brought down their civilization, she was involved in, and I need to go to Sunfall to find out.”

He’s been expecting her to say her mother is with Eclipse. For months, he’s been chewing on the notion that her mother is Carja and the entire reason for Aloy’s expulsion from her tribe, but this...this isn’t at all what he expected. He should know by now that he can’t predict Aloy or any of the fantastical things that swirl around her, but he _doesn’t_.

“Doors,” he says with a sudden burst of clarity. “ _Old_ doors.”

“Yes.”

“And the Derangement…” He thinks about how Aloy can pacify a Sawtooth and ride a Charger up to the Meridian gates. He thinks about the hot roil of Corruption, and her white face on the road to Pitchcliff. He thinks about how she'd seen through the ambush at Red Ridge Pass, and how she'd given Olin the second chance he didn't deserve. There’s a connection, he _knows_ there is, but Erend is brute force. He’s not a scholar. He needs someone like Aloy to weld the pieces in place. “Eclipse. Help me out.”

“The Derangement is just a side effect. It’s not the cause.” She swallows. “Eclipse knows I can open the doors. They knew before _I_ did, and they _really_ don't want me to.”

“Why?”

Aloy stares at the jewel on the table between them. “They have a...demon. It's telling them to raise the old machines, ones that Corrupt and kill. If they raise enough of them, what happened to the Ancient Ones will happen to us, and the orbital- whatever’s in Sunfall is the only way for me to figure out how to stop that. If I _don't_ stop the Eclipse - if I don't stop their demon…” She takes a breath. “It's an avalanche, Erend, and one wrong move will destroy everything. Do you understand that? I have to stop it now, before it can’t be stopped at all.”

Erend doesn’t want to believe her. From anyone else, he’d call it hot slag, but this is Aloy, curled in on herself as if she’s already bearing the weight of a mountain of snow. “How can they be okay with that?” he hears himself ask. “If the world gets destroyed, Eclipse gets destroyed along with it.”

“I don’t think they know,” she admits. “Their demon - it’s lying to them.”

“How do you know it’s lying?” He knows as soon as he asks, and she only confirms it.

“It’s not really a demon. It’s - a machine. An old one.”

“You can pacify it.” He’s seen her take a Sawtooth and use it against a pack of Snapmaws.  

Her eyelids flicker. “I _can’t_.”

The enormity of it all is starting to sink in. He’s starting to feel the same choking pressure that he sees in her shoulders. He knows the claustrophobia, the yawning chasm of terror-

He isn’t his father, he _isn’t_ his father, and he shouldn’t be thinking that right now, but he _is_ -

“This,” he manages, gesturing to the jewel because he needs something else to grab onto. “What's it do? How did Eclipse see you?”

“It’s called a Focus. Most of the Eclipse seem to have them. They’re connected together, like a web; everyone can see through everyone else’s eyes. It’s how they saw me through Olin’s.”

He wants to smash the thing, and smash Olin’s if it hasn’t been smashed already-

It hits him with a sudden, crashing wave of nausea. Eclipse can see through a Focus. _Aloy_ has a Focus- “You,” he manages. “They can see _you_ -”

“No.” She shakes her head. “They can’t, because I’m not on their network, and…” she hesitates. “I crashed their network a few weeks ago, and they haven’t gotten it fixed yet. They’re blind for now, but I have to _hurry_. If they get it back up, I won’t be able to get into Sunfall, and I won’t be able to get where I need to go.”

A few weeks ago, she’d shown up at the Meridian gate, reeling from a concussion and broken ribs.

He doesn’t need to ask. He doesn’t want to _know_. He’s only got the barest grasp on what she’s saying, but it almost doesn’t matter. He’s a soldier, and the most important takeaway is that she’s disrupted enemy communication. He doesn’t have to understand the technology to understand its significance, and he has no doubt that the Eclipse is scrambling hard to fix whatever it is she’s broken.

Aloy is going to walk into Sunfall, right into Eclipse’s waiting arms, and she is going to _die_. “I’m coming with you,” he says decisively. “If it’s the end of the world-”

Her expression is exasperated, and maybe even a little fond. “ _No_ , Erend. I have to be fast-”

“I can be fast,” he insists. It’s an earnest a lie as he’s ever told, and if his heart weren’t hammering painfully in his chest, he’d almost be proud of the delivery.

She raises an eyebrow at his armor. “They’ll hear you a mile away.”

“Yeah, well…” _Think of something, idiot._ “That’s so they’ll know when to start being afraid.” Aloy snorts, and thank the forge, he’s almost managed to clear the darkness from her face. He keeps going. “I’m big and scary. You’re just plain scary. We walk in together, they’ll wet themselves.”

Now she does chuckle, but there’s a watery undertone that breaks his heart. She turns it into a embarrassed cough. “Big and scary, huh?”

“Totally.” He swallows. “Look, you need backup for this. This is a huge, stupid thing - I mean, _you’re_ not stupid, obviously, but this...this is crazy. You already said you’re Eclipse’s most wanted, and you’re just going to walk right in? You really...” He makes a vague hand gesture. “You stand out. You do know that, right?”

“And yet I’ve been invisible my whole life,” she quips, and then adds more seriously, “I’m not going in...unaware. I have some support.”

He almost chokes on his tongue. Ersa left him behind, Aloy’s leaving him behind…what does he have to do to to prove he’s not a lost cause, that’s he’s not utterly useless? He’s not even she’s wrong. She’s staring right past him again, disregarding everything he’s offering, and he should be _glad_ there’s someone else, but he’s _not_ . He wants to be there. He needs to be there, but he’s a big, useless drunk even when he isn’t, and she _knows_ that, and he’ll never be anything more.

He’s his father’s son. He’s his father’s _son_ -

Erend feels himself slipping into Charming Oaf. “What, I’m not good-looking enough for your entourage?”

She doesn’t bother calling him out. “It’s as much help as I can risk.”

Fine. “Do you at least trust them?” he asks, because the last time she’d supposedly had support, she’d come back with a leg full of metalburn, and his nights are swollen with dreams about holding her down as she screams.

“No, I don’t,” Aloy says frankly. “But we have mutual interests, and I can’t do it alone.”

“Well...that’s better than nothing.” It has to be. “So you go to Sunfall, sneak past Eclipse, and then what?”

“Then I look for Elisabet, and maybe she’ll have some answers.”

“She’s just gonna be standing there?”

Aloy rolls her eyes. “There’s an entrance to a place the Ancients built. I was almost on top of it, before.”

Before she’d somehow gotten involved with defecting royals, and been mangled in the process.

“You’re delving,” he says, and then, because he’s an asshole: “You could have just said so. Aloy Delverwoman.” It sounds _terrible_ , a hard and clunky word that’s all wrong for someone so light.

He wants her to laugh, but the shadow is back on her face. “More accurate than Aloy of the Nora,” she mutters.

Erend wonders wildly what would happen if he kissed her, if that would distract her or if he'd just get punched.

He'd definitely get punched.

It would be _so_ worth it.

“When are you leaving?” he asks instead, because he knows how to take a hit, and it's easier to take a hit he knows is coming.

She looks away, and he can't see her hands under the table, but her arm moves like she's touching her injured leg. “It was stupid,” she mutters. “I shouldn't have helped.”

There’s only one way she'd have found a Shadow Carja soldier, and that's in a Shadow Carja encampment. There's only one way she'd have gotten into a Shadow Carja encampment, and the blood on her armor tells Erend that stealth had, for once, failed her.

On the breeze, he catches the smell of antiseptic hintergold and numbing freeze rime.

“How bad?” he asks sharply. His body clenches at the memory of holding her down, and fire and spit, those stitches are still fresh enough to tear at the slightest pull. He can't do it again, he _can't_ , but he already knows there’d be no hesitation if he has to.

“I can take care of myself,” she snaps.

“How bad,” he repeats.

She shakes her head. “It’ll be fine. I’ll wait a day, then cross. I can grab a Charger for most of it. The road isn’t busy enough that anyone will notice.”

“Where in Sunfall?” he asks, because he has to.

“Oh, it’s right beneath the Citadel,” she says, her face grim. “Naturally.”

His entire body is a bellows stretched beyond its capacity with caustic frustration, and it’s whistling out of his ears and mouth and eyes. If he doesn’t push himself away, if he doesn’t find some asshole thing that will puncture them both and release the pressure, he’s going to melt into a hot, stupid mess right here at this innkeeper’s table.

Then suddenly, they’re both laughing, the damp, humorless sound that comes from being long past the point of tears. “Wouldn’t have been anywhere else,” he manages. "Has to be right fucking _there_."

Of course it does.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tag update because oh shit

Eventually, the serving girl comes over and takes their cups with a pointed sigh, and the night is over. They don’t have to leave, but it’s late, and Erend has an early patrol. Aloy is heavy-lidded and sinking into a pile of her own arms.

One of these days, he thinks, they’re going to have a conversation during the day, one that isn’t a treacherous emotional minefield. They’re going to have a meal together: he’s going to be charming, and her laugh will be pure and true.

He wants to put a hand in her hair, to sink his fingers into the copper brightness and somehow let his fingertips convey everything he isn’t able to say, but instead, he walks her to the edge of the courtyard. “Where are you sleeping?”

He wants to ask her to come upstairs. He’s not even sure he wants to undress her. He just wants her to be somewhere where she’s safe and warm and loved, and even though he’s a poor excuse for any of that, he can’t see anyone else lining up to volunteer.  

She shrugs, glancing out beyond the city gates. “It’s...crowded here. I don’t know how people can hear themselves think.”

In the forest, then. He thinks of how she’d disappeared with her bedroll into the tall grass, and the dream he’d had of the pacified Watcher chirping curiously as it kept guard. “If you need anything,” he says, “you know where to find me.”

Anything. Anything at all. She can have the breath in his lungs and the blood in his veins, if such a thing is possible. He will take the hits she needs him to take, and he will be fucking _grateful,_  because he’ll be useful. He might even be worthy of that single minute of her time.

Aloy ducks her head. “That means a lot,” she says hoarsely.

“Anything,” he repeats. It means so much more than she knows.

 

****

 

Somehow, he sleeps. When he wakes up, the gnawing hangover has been replaced with a cloying depression, a gray cloud Erend can’t seem to shake until he’s on his way to talk with the local Carja guard, and he sees Aloy in conversation with one of the merchants.

The sun is climbing hot and high, but the fierce blaze of her hair is all the light he needs. She is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and the hard knot in his chest abruptly goes soft and loose.  

At his side, Kip teases, “Captain, you’re staring.”

“Shut up,” Erend says gruffly, feeling his ears go warm.

He’d take any excuse to talk to her, and conveniently, she’s the last person to come from the Branded Shore, and he needs to know what the Shadow Carja forces are doing. She has a wealth of information to share, and even as he quizzes her on troop movements, he’s glowing with proximity. They talk like they fight: he sets her up, and she takes the kill. He asks and she knows, and somehow he knows what to ask after that. When they fight, it’s the closest to competence he’s ever felt, and this is exactly the same.

Fire and spit. The Carja girl said it, and he understands perfectly: Erend’s been dead until now. He’s been freezing to death, and Aloy is life and heat. She’s garden soil after the hardscrabble dirt of the Claim, air when he’s drowning, water when his throat is full of grit and sand.

Aloy is detailing the capacity of the Carja outpost, her hair backlit by the ascending sun, when suddenly, everything makes sense.

Erend isn’t a scholar, but he’s heard tales about falling in love. The hero always comes to the realization like taking a bolt to the chest, but this isn’t like that at all. It just...is. Nyler asks Aloy some question about logistics, and Erend is listening to her frank and efficient answer when the thought floats across his mind. It’s not a shock. It’s as bright and obvious as the color of her hair, and Erend considers it with awed fascination.

Some part of him has known this all along. He’s known since the moment he met her. It’s the same part that somehow knew about Ersa and Avad long before his conscious mind could accept it.

He loves her. Of _course_ he does.

“What are you grinning about?” Aloy demands. “Are you even paying attention?”

He is so madly, blindly, stupidly in love.

 

****

 

It's somewhere around midmorning when Tandin comes to find them. “Local guard took down a pair of Chargers that got too close last night,” he says. “Now there's a Scrapper.”

“Never just one Scrapper,” Aloy says automatically. “There's always at least three.”

“That's what we're worried about. Captain, what's the plan?”

“I'll go,” says Aloy, because of course she will.

Erend hauls himself upright on his axe. “I'm coming with.”

“I'm faster alone-”

Tandin’s still standing there. “...Crowd control,” Erend offers. “I'll keep the riffraff out of the way.”

She narrows her eyes. “Riffraff.”

“We got this,” Erend tells Tandin. “You, Nyler and Kagget: stay at the gates, but be ready if we need backup.”

“I _don't-_ ” Aloy insists, but he's still talking.

“Kip and the others stay on their patrol. Got it?”

Tandin nods. “Got it.”

As soon as the Vanguardsmen are out of earshot, he turns back to Aloy to head off her protest. “Look, you're better at this. Steel to my bones, I know that. Just...let me be backup. I won't get in your way.”

_You're still hurt. Please let me help you. Please don't do this by yourself because I know you can, but if you can't and I lose you I'm going to lose my mind._

She’s already leaving. He knows that. She’s going to Sunfall, and there isn’t a single rusting thing he can do about it. He can’t look into that future. He can’t let himself, not when he’s ringing like a perfect hammerfall in her presence.

Aloy’s already shaking her head. “If I hit them just right, it only takes a single shot. They won't even know I'm there.”

He thinks of her in the tall grass, of how she can disappear in plain sight. “Tandin and the others will be at the gate. I can be...down the road.”

Aloy lets her breath out in a huff. “Just _say_ what you're thinking, Erend.”

Fire and spit, she's just like Ersa and he almost wants to strangle her. “I'm thinking it's been five days since you were bleeding all over me,” he snaps. “And I know you're fine with Scrappers, but hammer to steel, you're the most stubborn person I've ever met. You're the lead. I know that. Tell me where you need me to be, but don't tell me not to follow. I can't follow you to Sunfall, but I can follow you _right now_.”

Her jaw works.

“You think you don't _need_ backup,” he says, swallowing back the memory of shock wax on her lips and the horror of her body in his arms. “Maybe you don't, but I'm offering, and you should take it.”

“...fine,” she says, because maybe she understands that he can also be a stubborn asshole. He can tell by the lines on her forehead how much the admission costs her.

They wade into the tall grass. “Wait here,” she orders, and obediently, he crouches.

He can barely tell where she is as she moves through the grass.There's only a small rustle as she passes, indistinguishable from the little ripples made by the light breeze.

She is the most brilliant thing he's ever seen, and he loves her.

He _loves_ her.

He doesn't see the first arrow, but abruptly the Scrapper wandering away from its fellows goes down in a spray of sparks. The other two look up in alarm. He's expecting her to take them out right then, but she doesn't; she waits, and so does he, until the machines warily return to their salvage. When they're calm, she hits another one, this time so hard that it flips end over end.

The third Scrapper flares to full alert, and she's told him to _wait_ , but then she puts two arrows through its heart and it's dead.

It wasn't even a challenge. She had it under control the whole time, no risk to her injury or herself. He feels stupid for inviting himself along-

Except she's not moved out of the grass, and Erend’s following her lead, so he hasn't moved either, and suddenly he understands why.

The Scrappers weren't alone.

He feels it before he sees it, the ground-shaking footfalls that resonate in his sternum. His stomach shrinks into a hard knot, and then the Sawtooth steps into view.

Okay. Okay. He's brute force. He's solid muscle. Adrenaline boils into his blood, furious and hot.

She's too far away from it to pacify it, and it's already red and searching. She fires an arrow that hits with a concussive blast, knocking half the plates off the beast’s left side. It howls and swings around.

It's found her scent. Aloy abandons all pretense of stealth, and rolls behind a nearby rock, striking up two fire arrows and sending them out. Erend doesn’t bother waiting for her direction; he stands up and yells, and the machine’s head swings up to stare directly at him.

Well. Good thing he’s wearing his _light_ armor.

This is going to hurt.

The Sawtooth charges. Erend doesn’t have half of Aloy’s speed and flexibility, but he knows how to dodge.

He knocks off its belly plate, and he hasn't even moved out of the way before she's nocked an arrow and sent it spinning. He feels the air as it passes, but then the Sawtooth whirls, and Erend goes flying.

He doesn’t realize it’s over until something thumps him in the chest, and all the air rushes back into his lungs. Aloy is leaning over him, arms raised deliver a second blow.

“Hang on,” he gasps out. “Just - stop with the hitting.” He sits up, coughing and waving her off. “Got...the wind knocked out of me. I’m okay.”

She’s breathing hard, her entire body shuddering with the effort.

“I got hit,” he says. “I’m good at taking a hit. It’s fine.”

She’s staring, sparks all but flying off her skin, and belated he realizes she’s not angry. She’s _scared_. “I told you,” she growls, “to _wait!_ ”

Okay, also angry. “And let you get crushed?” The expression on her face claws at him, and he hates that it exists and loves that it's directed at him and hates himself for loving it. “That’s not gonna happen.”

“I had it!”

He very deliberately drops his eyes to her leg, where the bandage is damp and seeping.

“I had it,” she repeats.

“Like you had the Thunderjaw?” It’s a cruel thing to say, but there’s still the red heat of battle glowing under his skin, and she’s _bleeding again_ , and he can’t shut his fucking mouth.

She hisses, and shoves him hard enough to knock him back to the ground. “Hey!” he says. “What was that for?”

Her eyes are blazing like the noonday sunlight through scorched leaves, and her hair is a wild tangle of copper fire. “You keep saying you can take a hit,” Aloy snarls. “Just because you _can_ doesn’t mean you _have to_.”

He knows how to take a hit. He knows how to absorb the force and channel it into his own fists if he can fight back, or to absorb it if he can’t. It’s something he learned at a very, very early age, and it’s so ingrained into who he is that it’s honestly never occurred to him that he could be any other way.

Ersa got clever. Erend got tough.

He knows how to take a hit, but for some reason, he’s not expecting this one. Maybe he’s still breathless and aching. Maybe he didn’t notice a blow to the head. Maybe it’s just Aloy, searing through his defenses like she always does, laying him out flat. Her words come at him sideways and go straight for his kidneys. She doesn’t mean to, but that’s what happens, and he has to put his head down between his knees and breathe hard to keep from puking.

He never expects Aloy, and she guts him every time. If it were anyone else, he could grin and deflect, but she’s blistering flame and he has nothing.

“Brute force, remember?” he manages, but there’s an infuriating tremble in his voice.

She’s staring at him now, all irritation lost. She’s looking at him the way she does when she’s suddenly figured something out but is still working out what to do with the information. She grew up outcast and she’s never learned how to keep her face from showing everything she feels. He finds it a useful barometer, because she’s a fascinating, unpredictable storm and he studies her like the most dedicated scholar, but right now, he just wants a moment in private to swallow back and lock up things he’d rather not remember.

“It’s what I _do_ ,” he hears himself snap. “What else am I good for? Should I just stand there and read poetry?”

“You are so much more than that,” Aloy breathes.

“Yeah, well, it’s worked out for me so far.” It really hasn’t, but he’s had no other path. He’s his father’s son, strong and stupid and drunk. He has no idea how to be anything else.

Her eyes flash. “What would Ersa say?”

“She wouldn’t have to!” And that’s it: the gates are open and the water is boiling out, heavy and churning and white. He shoves himself to his feet, swaying. “You weren’t there. You don’t know. You keep asking what Ersa would think, but you don’t know and I _do_ , and she wouldn’t say anything. There’s nothing to say. She was the smart one and I could take the hit and until she got us out, that’s what we _did_ -”

His throat mercifully closes up. They didn’t talk about it. Ersa had said it was better, he’d _agreed_ it was better-

Aloy’s still staring, and fire and _spit_ , he’s shattering from the weight of her gaze. “Erend,” she says quietly. “That shouldn’t have happened.”

“Well, it did. And there’s nothing to change it.”

“You’re changing it.”

“ _Am_ I?”

She frowns. “How can you not see that?”

They're both breathing heavily, and there's blood seeping through the bandage on her leg. There's three dead Scrappers and the sparking, hulking corpse of a Sawtooth, but they're okay. She’s okay. He’s okay.

Is he? He’s small and scared and big and scary, and fire and spit, this is too huge for even the wide barrel of his chest. He held her down, shock wax on her lips, the snap of a belly plate as he knocks it away for her perfect hit-

He wants to lock himself in a room and cry for a month. He wants to drown himself in the Daybrink, letting the water swallow him whole. He wants-

He wants to kiss her. He wants her to swallow him whole. He wants to see the world through her eyes, to scrape away the dross and perceive the world with sharp, perfect clarity. He wants to stand in her halo and never, ever leave, because she makes everything make sense, and she's the first light he's ever known. 

“I-” he says, and then swallows it back. _I love you_ , he wants to say, but she’s poised as if she’s not sure whether to touch him or run, and he can’t trap her here with those words.

Not when he's trapped by them himself. 

 

****

 

She leaves for Sunfall. Of course she does.

 _I love you_ , he almost says, as he watches her cinch the last few supplies into her bag. _I love you_ , he almost says, as she pats her potion belt to confirm she’s fully stocked with everything she might require. _I love you_ , he almost says, as she adjusts the terrible Shadow Carja armor into some semblance of protection.

The words don't come out. He can’t say it right now, not when she’s leaving. Not when she’s going into the belly of her enemy’s stronghold with only a voice in her ear as backup. He’ll tuck the words against his chest like something small and tender and fragile, and he’ll offer them up the next time she comes back.

She has to come back. She _has_ to.

If he were less of a coward, he’d take her face in his hands and kiss her, long and sweet and slow, and she’d understand, and maybe she wouldn’t leave. He’s not that kind of man; she’s definitely not that kind of woman. He can't do it, and even if he did, he's not sure she would understand.

He doesn’t deserve a minute of her time, but he’s had way more than two. He should just settle back and be grateful, but he isn’t. He’s his father’s son, and he wants more. He wants everything, and the shrilling need in his chest will never be satisfied.

He's being more. Is he?

“Send me a letter,” he says hopefully, hands clenched behind his back so she can’t see how badly they’re shaking. “You know, when you get there.”

“Oh yeah,” she says. “It'll be the first thing I do. You know, right after not dying.”

His lungs shiver inside his chest, too small and too damp, and he feels himself slip into Charming Lout. “Priorities,” he agrees.

“Well…” She hoists her bag into her shoulder. “Take care of yourself, Erend. Please be sober?”

“For you,” he says, “anything.”

Aloy rolls her eyes. “Do it for yourself, idiot.”

“You're the only one around to yell at me,” he points out. “Otherwise, what do I have?”

“You’re better than this,” she snaps. “You know that. So _be_ better.”

Okay. He deserved that, and he should _not_ be as delighted with her glare as he is. “I’ll be better. I promise. Now, don’t you have machines to master and killers to track?”

She grumbles, but there’s no heat behind it.

 _I_ _love you,_ he almost says, and if he doesn’t kiss her goodbye, it’s because his limbs are frozen in place. He’s sodden, naked and cold in front of her as she leaves. He knows what it’s like to be dead, and he knows how to take a hit, and more than anything else, he knows how to curl up and wait until it’s over.

He can survive this. He always has.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated overall rating and archive tags because gore.

Erend goes back to Meridian. He tucks himself into his own chest, curled around _I love you_ like muscle clenched around a wound, and tries to remember how to live.

The monsoons hit their peak, the colorful banners snapping in the wind. Rain drenches the buttes, flooding the terraces and filling the cisterns. Down in the maize fields, farmers till the muddy soil, planting the corn, beans and squash that will feed the city for the next year. The Spire rises tall and glistening above the landscape, and in the distant east, a Stormbird lazily patrols the high canyons.

 _It’s an avalanche. One wrong move, and one wrong move will destroy everything_.

The world doesn’t look like it’s in mortal peril. It’s the same world he’s been living in for twenty-five years. Just...smaller. Sadder. Lonelier than he could have ever imagined.

He checks with Marad. He tries to find the purple-robed handmaiden, and fails. He makes the rounds in the marketplace, casually talking with traders and merchants, anyone who might have heard news from Sunfall. He reworks patrol schedules. He arranges for friendly sparring between his men and their Carja counterparts. The Carja garrison commander isn’t particularly fond of the Oseram presence, but Erend forges Charming Lout into something stronger, something made of firm, flexible steel, and the man eventually comes around.

Erend can’t follow Aloy, but he can rally around her. He has no idea what’s coming, but he’s brute force and solid muscle, so he puts his shoulder against the weight of the unknown future. He’s not Ersa, but he’s still the Captain of the Vanguard, and there’s no one else to reinforce the weakest welds of the world.

_No more playing around. You’re gonna have to grow up real fast._

He wants to drink. He wants to drink very, very, very badly. Even in the dense heat, he shivers at night, locked in dreams where he’s holding Aloy down, his hand over her mouth as she fights him but he has to, he _has_ to, because otherwise, his father’s going to come, his father’s going to hear-

He finally goes to a healer. “I can give you something to help you sleep,” she says, “but this isn’t anything a potion’s going to fix. You know that, right?”

He knows. Fire and spit, he knows.

“Talking will help,” the healer says. “Have to work these things out like a knot. Take apart the pieces and put them out in the sun. There aren’t any shadows at noon.”

He’d been afraid of that.

“Ersa, what do I do?” Erend asks his empty bedroom. “We got out. Everything was fine. Why isn’t it fine now?”

_Was it fine?_

He can’t tell if it’s her voice answering or his own.

 

****

 

He doesn’t really have anyone to talk to. His men perform well, and Erend buys them drinks. He meets with Talanah, but the nobility is warming to her status as Sunhawk of the Lodge, and with that acceptance comes greater demands on her time.

He sucks on spicy, pungent seeds to occupy his mouth, and throws himself into his work.

It’s hard to be idle. Nasadi and Itamen’s return have set the nobility on fire, factions forming and re-forming on a daily basis. Avad’s step-mother and brother, for their part, stay hidden in the palace, and that causes its own flurry of rumors. The Vanguard are either valued allies, the only ones to be trusted with the safety of the prodigal royals, or they’re traitors for letting Dervahl slip away.

 _Go to your core_ , Ersa reminds him. _Make yourself a fortress._

There are too many buffeting winds, too many opinions, and Erend doesn’t have a head for politics. He’s brute force. He’s solid muscle. His job is to ensure the safety of the Sun King and his family, and anything else is more than his brain can handle. He keeps his head up and eyes open, a large, imposing presence when Avad meets with his gabbling court.

He wonders what Ersa would have done. She’d never hesitated to jump into an argument, and if there weren’t any available, she’d be happy to start one. She’d known how to read people. She’d size up her opponent and have them eating out of her palm like a tame boar before they even realized they’d been beaten. Erend isn’t like that; he’s too cautious. He’s too flippant. He swings wildly between charming lout and silent guardian, and he never really knows which one he’s going to be.

He never really knows which one he _is_.

 

****

 

Eventually, there’s a huge party to celebrate the royals’ return. Itamen wants nothing to do with it, and frankly, neither does Avad, but they’re both inured to the pomp and circumstance of their station. Nasadi accepts it with cool indifference, like she does everything. It’s a modest celebration by Carja standards, but the Carja aren’t particularly known for their moderation, and even though Erend’s lived in Meridian for three years now, the explosion of light and color is dizzying.

“At what point do I rescue him?” Talanah asks, sidling up with a grin.

To anyone else, Avad is very patiently listening to a group of young men pontificate on the need to crush the Shadow Carja in the west. Erend only knows from long experience that the Sun King is very near his limit.

“Three minutes ago,” Erend says. “Maybe five.”

“That’s what I thought.” She winks. “Watch me go ruffle their tailfeathers a little. This will be good fun.”

The Sunhawk of the Lodge weaves her way through the crowd. Her gown is almost obscenely minimalist compared to the bright tropical birds assembled tonight, but it suits her perfectly: thick yellow silk cascades from her shoulders like molten gold, the only extra adornment the unmistakable machine-plate headpiece of her position. She easily disrupts the conversation, and Avad’s relief is palpable. He places a gentle hand on her elbow, and is rewarded with a brilliant smile.

Sun and Hawk, Erend thinks. Both radical enough to incite change, both wise enough to proceed with caution. Their bloodlines are the oldest and most respected in the entire Sundom, and a union would cement the progressive future of the Carja, turning the revolution into a legacy. He doesn’t need a head for politics to see the logic in the match.

Erend thinks of Ersa, of how he’d sat with them both for years and somehow never noticed that they were lovers. Avad could never have walked around with Ersa at his side the way he’s walking with Talanah, no matter how badly he’d wanted to. Even if the nobility would have accepted an Oseram queen, Ersa would have refused.

At least, he thinks she would have, but what he doesn’t know about his sister is suddenly a deep vein of ore he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to mine. Had she and Avad hidden their relationship that well, or had Erend just been oblivious, the idiot brother, the useless drunk? He wonders if he just wasn’t ready to notice it, if it’s taken Aloy storming in and out of his life for him to actually pay attention to the quiet intimacies of other people.

 _I love you_ , he thinks. She’d hate this party. She’d hate Meridian, sultry storms and too many saturated colors.

He misses her. He wonders where she is, and he hopes like hell she’s okay.

 

****

 

Meridian calms down. Erend tries to calm down, too.

There’s a string of warehouse break-ins, and then even a murder in the marketplace. The rain doesn’t let up. He trudges through the streets in sodden armor. It would be easier to take comfort in a bottle, and let the alcohol blur the edges, but he can’t. He _can’t_.

He slips up once, and the nightmares almost kill him. He’s so drunk he can’t move, and there’s a Sawtooth standing on his chest. Aloy is in the distance, alone and unaware, and no matter how hard he tries, Erend can’t scream at her to run. Finally, she turns to look at him, and there’s blood pouring down the front of her leathers. “You’re making it better,” she says. “Aren’t you?”

The cold terror clings to him long after the hangover is gone.

 

****

 

He walks the palace hallways, its balconies and winding passages. He maps the secret tunnels, slogging through the sewers and taking note of every crumbling wall and vent. Dervahl snuck into the palace this way, and Erend is determined not to let such a thing happen again. He brings his reports to Avad, and watches as builders haul stone and steel.

Itamen watches, too. At first, Erend thinks the boy is just fascinated by the workers, but it becomes apparent that Avad’s younger brother is much more fascinated by a certain Captain of the Vanguard.

Avad is the closest thing Erend has to family these days, and that’s a punch in the chest every time he thinks about it. Itamen is painfully shy, but something about him gnaws at the raw, tender part between Erend’s lungs. He knows what it’s like to fear a father, to grow up with blood in his eyes and terror in his heart, and every time he looks at the prince, his hand drifts toward his axe with an anger as fierce as it is unexpected.

Erend’s never thought about his own future. He’s never thought about anything beyond the next moment, the next breath, the next battle, the next drink. Ersa had been the planner, the one who saw through the maze of life and plotted an escape. Erend is brute force, the useless drunk, the one who’s fucked up too many times to anticipate any semblance of success.

The world is hanging on the edge of a battle only Aloy fully understands, but one afternoon, Erend watches Itamen gallop a small wooden Strider across a balcony railing, and starts to wonder. He thinks of red hair, of freckles and bright copper-green eyes. He thinks of heat and life, a hearth that’s not black with long-dead soot.

That night, the nightmare starts with blood on his hands, and ends with Aloy curled around Itamen’s broken body, her face a mess of brain and bone like Ersa’s false corpse. Erend wakes himself with a horrified scream, and pukes until he can’t breathe.

He stops wondering after that. He can’t. Not when he’s his father’s son, the cloying poison of a failed clan burning in his veins. He’s a moth, beating his sooty wings against forces he can’t control. If he has a future, it’s to be consumed by flame, and if there’s any mercy left in this world, he won’t take anyone else with him when he goes.

 

****

 

The world is utterly silent, and then Erend wakes up one day and it explodes.

It’s an unremarkable morning. The sky is a blank, featureless blue, the air breathless and still. It’s a rare moment between monsoon storms, and the courier that comes to collect him dances around the puddles in the streets.

Erend _runs_.

“News from Sunfall,” Avad says. “We’ve only just heard.”

“My agents just received confirmation. The Sun Ring,” says Marad, “is gone.”

In the west, the jungle stretches out glossy and thick. A flock of birds rises above the canopy, a dense cloud of feathery bodies.

“Gone,” Erend repeats.

“Gone,” the spymaster confirms.

The story has been relayed through a series of messengers, but Erend knows immediately that the details are not exaggerated. A red-haired Nora brave was put in the cage and dropped into the Ring. She took down a Trampler bare-handed, and the Ring along with it. Two Deranged Sawtooths broke through the walls, and she escaped on a Charger with another man. They rode out of the city before anyone could stop them, and disappeared into the wild. The Citadel is in chaos, and Helis is scrambling for control.

“She’s alive,” Erend croaks, suddenly shaking as violently as if he’s been stripped naked and doused with chillwater. “She’s just - tell me she’s alive.”

“She was alive the last we saw,” Marad says, and then Erend is lurching to puke into a nearby planter.

When he comes back to the conversation, he feels the details slide past him like slippery trout. She survived the Sun Ring. Ersa had survived the Sun Ring. It wasn’t impossible, but Ersa had an entire contingent of other prisoners to help her fight, and Aloy had _no one_.

There’s shock wax on her lips, and the bright flag of her hair buried in the snow. There’s blood on her leg and the sharp wrongness of metalburn, and then he’s holding her down, _he’s holding her down_ , she’s screaming into her fist, and he’s holding-

“Erend,” Avad says, and he abruptly realizes the briefing is over. Marad and his agent are gone. The Sun King is looking at him with deep concern. “I won’t ask if you’re well.”

Erend has never, ever been well. “I’m fine. Just- it’s a lot to take in.”

Ersa had liked Avad because he was quiet, for a king. He knew when to listen, and when he did speak, his words had a deep, inescapable gravity. Ersa had given the orders to her army, Erend and Adar as her lieutenants, but Avad was the banner under which they fought.

Avad still knows when to listen, and when to speak. He sees everything that’s laid before him. “My friend,” he says. “I’m sorry. I knew, but...I didn’t truly realize.”

“My duty is here,” Erend says automatically, because he’s a soldier and he knows how to shove words from his mouth when he needs to, even if he’s ringing with the sick tone of a poorly-struck blade.

Sadness lines the edges of the Sun King’s eyes like the dark kohl of his office. “You are so much like your sister,” he says quietly. “She once told me the same thing.”

Somehow, Erend chuckles. “Yeah, sounds like her. Except she probably growled when she said it.”

Avad inclines his head. “She...yes, that’s exactly it.” He puts a hand on Erend’s shoulder. “Talanah....this is a good match, both for ourselves and for the Sundom. I go into it willingly and with great hope, but in my heart, Ersa...Ersa cannot ever be replaced. The chains of my position limit me from expressing myself as I would wish. Erend,” he says gravely, “understand that I say this not as your king, but as your friend: you aren’t tied as I am. If there’s happiness to be found in this world, I beg you to find it.” Grief wrinkles the skin beneath his crown. “Please, for both of us.”

“That’s setting my sights a little high,” Erend says, because he’s an asshole.

“Your continued disregard for your own worth,” Avad tells him sharply, “is unacceptable.”

He knows. Fire and spit, he _knows_.

“You _shame_ Ersa’s sacrifice.”

That hits him square in the chest, and Erend goes dizzy and cold.

“How much family did you have?” Avad goes on, and suddenly, this is Avad, the king. This is Avad, the fire-hardened man who should have been Erend’s brother-in-law, the man who loved a strong, fierce woman and had to sacrifice everything he wanted on the bloody altar of his duty. “Aunts, uncles, cousins? You come from a broken clan, but did you ever stop to think what she did? What she _really_ did?”

She got them out. He took the hits, and she got them out-

“Ersa survived the Sun Ring,” Avad says, and there’s no mistaking the calm in his voice for anything other than perfectly-honed steel. “She could have killed your father and taken over. She was a born leader, and she could have brought the clan together. She could have made herself a pillar in Mainspring. She could have gone for ealdorman and _won_ , Erend. You know that.”

No, he doesn’t know. They left, and she was _taken_ , and then the revolution swept them up like a blazing fire-

“She could have done anything,” Avad says, the barest hint of bitter grief shivering in his voice. “Instead, what did she do? She took you and left. She looked around at the smoking rubble of her life and decided that you, her _idiot brother,_ the _useless drunk_ , were the only thing worth saving. When she was stolen by my father’s men for the Sun Ring, she fought more fiercely than anyone I’d ever seen. I was incidental. Do you understand that? Without my help, she would have eventually carved her own way.”

She took the twisted scrap of their broken clan and turned it into a sword that she used to get them out, to get them away. She’d tried to protect him, tried to shield him, but Erend is solid muscle, he’s brute force, and he knows how to roll into a hit, how to go inside himself like a rabbit in its burrow-

“I tried to help her,” Avad says quietly. “She refused to speak to me for weeks, and when she did, it was to demand the fate of her brother. Did you know that? She could have bartered for her life. She could have threatened to kill me. No, she asked about you.”

Erend can take a hit. He can be punched and kicked and beaten until he’s pissing blood and seeing double. He’s immune to bruises and broken bones, but this - this is so much worse. He can’t breathe. His mouth is flooding with sour bile, but there’s a phantom hand around his throat, squeezing, choking-

“When we left, she found you first. She didn't rest until you were safe, and only then did she consider the logistics of a revolution. She gave you men. She knew you could lead them. Have you looked at your men, Erend? They'd die for you. They obey your command because they _trust_ you. Oseram or Carja - tell me how many companies enjoy that kind of solidarity.” Avad crosses his arms. “Go ahead. Tell me.”

He’s trying to stay in his body, and failing. He can feel the distance in his limbs, the spreading numbness as his soul turns to pale, floating ash.

“She knew going to Dervahl was a trap,” Avad goes on, the words thick and tight. “She knew, and she went despite it. You truly think she left you behind because she thought you were _worthless_ ? She left you behind because she knew you _aren't_. She was waiting for you to pull yourself together, Erend. She was waiting for you to grow into the man she knew you could be.”

_You’re gonna have to grow up fast._

“She left everyone else behind, and she never looked back. She brought you. Tell me, does that look like familial obligation to you?”

She dragged him out of the Claim. She dragged him out of fights, she dragged him out of a bottle again and again and again, and he’d _resented_ her for it. He’d resented being forced into responsibility. He’d been perfectly happy to be dumb muscle, perfectly happy to let her carry the burden of his existence. He’d let her carry them both, and he’s done _nothing_ to be worthy of that. Avad is his king, and more than that, Avad should have been his brother-in-law, and Avad is absolutely, irrevocably correct.

_No more playing around._

“Ersa died to save us both,” Avad says quietly. “If you profane her sacrifice, you profane the Sundom itself, and you are not welcome in its light.”

The conversation is done.


	14. Chapter 14

When he claws his way back into his body, Erend’s first instinct is to go drown himself, to put his head in a bottle and let the burn of the alcohol overwhelm the punishing blow of Avad’s words, but that’s exactly the problem, that’s been the problem since the very start, and Erend knows it.

Instead, he leaves the palace. He passes the watch to Adar, and walks out of the city.

He’s not entirely sure where he’s going, but he needs air and he needs clarity, and somehow, he ends up at the Spire.

Erend is his father's son. He’s Ersa’s little brother. He's never thought those two things could be different, but Avad’s words shattered the bedrock on which Erend’s built his entire life. The tremors wrack his bones like the deepest fever. If this were just a bad batch of brew, he could throw it up and be done, but he can't puke out his soul and everything connected to it, so he stays dizzy and sweating.

He can't handle the weight of this. He _can't._  He can't breathe and he can't move. This is _magnitudes_ worse than Dervahl’s excruciating sound weapon, but this time, there's no one to rescue him. He isn't Ersa. He isn't _Ersa._ He's been trying so hard to be _something,_ but he has absolutely no idea what that something is.

He doesn't know what he wants. He doesn't know what he can _have_. He's the idiot brother, the useless drunk, the one who's had to have his life handed to him one piece at a time because he's too fucking incompetent to figure it out himself.

 _No._  He isn't a useless drunk. It's worse than that. He's been hiding behind his addiction as an excuse to avoid the hard choices of his life, but he's been desperately coaxing a dying forge, and this is the end. He’s out of fuel, and he doesn’t have anyone else to give him any more.

The break in the clouds is over, the bruise-purple sky knitting together like disappointed brows.

He thinks briefly of throwing himself off the edge of the cliff, of spreading out his arms to embrace the ground, but that’s not going to solve anything.

Dervahl’s voice echoes in his head: _knowing you, Erend, you'd screw it up._

“What do I do, Ersa?” he asks quietly. “How does this go?”

She’s not going to help him. She’s dead and sent off, and he’s leaning on her even when she’s earned her peace. He’s got no one but himself, and fire and spit, he’s never _once_ done anything on his own.

He has to figure this out, and he doesn’t have anyone to prop him up, and he has no fucking clue.

He stares down at the heavy steel caps on his boots. He’s brute force. He’s put himself and Ersa in distinct, separate categories: he’s the muscle and she’s the brains, but she was a fierce fighter in her own right. Maybe, just maybe, he’s got enough gray matter in his thick skull to be a bit of a thinker himself. He’s been shuffling parts of his life around like tumblers on a lock, hoping to discover the magic combination that will bring the gift of confidence. Maybe the confidence will come, but Avad was right - Erend can’t count on it dropping out of the sky onto his head like a Glinthawk. He can’t wait for some nebulous future, not when his life is falling apart _right now_. He’s got to make a plan.

Step one: stop drinking. This is non-negotiable. The slavering want is never going to go away. It’s in his blood, distilled through the generations like a particularly vicious liquor. He’s been working _so hard_ , but he needs to work harder. He’s been hoping he’ll reach a point where he’ll have a day without the need shrilling in his ears, but that day hasn’t happened yet, and he has to devise a coping strategy  _right now._  He’s going to screw up - he’s Erend, the idiot brother, so of course he will - but every military offensive has a back-up plan. He's going to fail, and he needs to figure out how to get back on his feet without someone else hauling him up.

Step two: get his head on straight. He’s flailing around like a bellows with a hole, and he needs to _stop._  He needs to make himself into a fortress, and he needs to be proactive. There’s more to fortifying than just desperately piling up rocks, but that’s all he’s been doing. Of course he’s constantly failing and falling apart. He doesn’t have a foundation. He doesn’t have a center. He doesn’t have a _plan._

Ersa always said that knowledge is the sharpest weapon, and he'd been a meathead and laughed it off. Now, he's down in the dirt, bloody and staggering, and steel to his bones, he could use a weapon about now.

He has no idea how he’s going to figure this out, but it needs to happen. It needs to happen, and it needs to happen _fast_ , or he’s going to lose the one place that’s ever felt like home. If he doesn’t stop trying to forge with slag, Avad is going to ask him to leave Meridian, and Erend will have no choice but to go. Ersa had tried to teach him - fire and _spit_ , she’d tried so hard - but he hadn’t listened, and now he’s got to figure this shit out on his own.

He’s been telling himself he’s incompetent for so long. That absolutely has to change, and staring into the face of it makes him dizzy.

Step three.

Step three is one he can’t even think about. Just skirting the edges makes him as shaky and nauseous as if he’s standing in a cloud of volcanic gas. He’s his father’s son. He’s Ersa’s brother. There are memories clinging to his bones, claws sunk deeply into his skin, and he _hates_ them-

 _You weren’t the only one who learned to take a hit,_  Ersa reminds him quietly.

It’s easier if he remembers it that way. It’s easier to pretend he was the only one to take the brunt of their father’s anger. It’s easier to take everything else and put it in a box that he welds shut and buries under the deepest mountain. It’s easier to think of Ersa as the one who got out, and to forget that they wore the same bruises.

They wore the same bruises. _They wore the same bruises,_ and Ersa got them out, Ersa took her rage and made herself a finely honed weapon-

He’s out of his body before he even feels it leave. His feet take him through the mud, the pace urgent and fevered. He has to walk, he has to move, he's choking, _choking-_

Erend has as much potential as Ersa ever did. Any incompetence has been his own choice. He wonders if Ersa ever felt the same hunger in her blood, the same painful scream for golden oblivion. He’d never asked. He’d never _asked._  He’d just assumed that as the male heir, his fall was inevitable, that the family cancer was terminal and malignant and somehow, either by gender or intelligence, she'd been immune. If he hadn’t been such a drunken bung himself, he might have noticed if she’d held herself back. He truly doesn’t know.

It feels like something he can’t ask Avad. Not when Avad’s grief is just as deep as his own.

_You’re so much more than that._

He doesn’t want to think about this. He’s brute force, he’s solid muscle, but the weight of this sits in front of him, insurmountable and mocking.

Erend should leave. He should go assemble his men and make plans for any aggression by the splintered Shadow Carja. He should take himself back to the forge and make himself into something strong and resolute. He should be the Captain of the Vanguard, the personal protector of the Sun King.

He should not still be sitting here in the mud, staring into the west with bile in his mouth and his heart in his throat.

He puts his head in his hands, and _cries._

 

****

 

Erend is brute force. He’s solid muscle, and he knows the point where muscle fails.

It’s raining, a hard, steady downpour. He’s soaked through his gambeson down to his skin. It isn’t even mid-afternoon, but the clouds are thick as dusk. He’s so tired it’s hard to breathe. His ribs ache. His face feels as swollen as if he’s gone twenty rounds with the biggest heavyweight in the Claim.

The easiest thing would be to lie down here in the mud and let the rain wash him away. He could open his mouth to the sky and let it flood into his clotted lungs. He could let himself dissolve, and everything that is Erend Vanguardsman would dissolve into anonymous red earth. His bloodline is a poison vine, long and tangled, and he could end it right here. He knows how to take a hit, and he could do it one last, decisive time without flinching.

He thinks about Aloy. He thinks of a wild blaze of hair and bright copper-green eyes. He thinks of knocking the belly plate off a Sawtooth, opening it up for her perfect kill. He thinks of freckles and _you are more than this._

He thinks of the pressure of her fingers on his scalp, of Itamen’s shy curiosity. He thinks about the imagined warmth of her body against his, and maybe, just _maybe_ , a hearth that’s not dead and cold.

He has no right to love her, but he _does_. She’s heat and light, and he’s a moth, fluttering desperately toward the flame. Moths die in the rain, but if he has to die - and everything dies - he wants to be swallowed up in the blooming fire of Aloy’s hair.  

She’s out there looking for answers to a question he can’t even comprehend, and she’s _finding_ them. She went into Sunfall, and brought it to its knees. She goes into haunted Ancient places, and brings out long-dead secrets. She tames machines and tracks killers all before breakfast, and she does it alone.

She looked at a patch of scuffed dirt, and told him Ersa wasn’t dead.

Erend heaves himself to his feet. He can’t go with her, but by the forge, he can try and make himself worthy of her time.

 

****

 

Step one.

He doesn’t have a large reserve of shards, but he takes what he has and goes to every tavern in the city to dump a handful on the counter. “Don’t serve me,” he says, and it’s the hardest fucking thing he’s ever done. “No matter what I say. Sell me me food, sell me tea, give me water. Not a drop of ale.”

The barkeepers shrug, and keep the coin.

He has the same conversation with his men, and that’s even _harder._  “Look,” he says, “I haven’t been my best. You’re fierce and honorable men, the best that’s ever come out of the Claim. I’m humbled and honored by your trust in me, and you deserve better than what I’ve given.”

“Cap, no-” Kip protests, but Erend silences him with a look.

“It’s not negotiable,” he says. “I’m not Ersa, and I’ll never be. I’ve been a complete bung - no, don’t deny it, I know exactly how I’ve been. You shouldn’t have to drag my sorry ass around as well as your own. Steel to my bones, I'm gonna do better."

“So…” Tandin considers. “We see a drink in your hand that shouldn’t be there, we...shoot it?”

“Yeah,” Erend says, swallowing back a hot wash of shame. “Take the shot. Just - try not to take my hand off in the process.”

 

****

 

It takes a couple of weeks for him to notice, but one day, he does: the rest of Vanguard have been showing up a little early for their shifts. They've been a little more focused. He walks his night patrol, and there are fewer of his men hanging out in the square in the darkest hours. “This is for me,” Erend points out sternly. “This is me taking responsibility for something I should have take care of _years_ ago. This isn't a directive for the rest of you.”

Nyler crosses his arms. “Carja already think we’re drunken idiots. We talked among ourselves. Can’t say there’s not grumbling, but we decided...maybe it's time we prove them wrong.”

“Just because we can drink them under the table doesn’t mean we _have_ to,” Tandin adds. “Unless it’s a special occasion. Or if they’re being bungs.”

Kip nods. “Then we _drown_ ‘em.”

The meeting ends, and on the way out, Adar knocks against his shoulder. “You’re not Ersa,” Erend’s second says quietly, his lips twitching in what might be approval. “All the things she was good at, Ersa couldn’t have done this.”

Fire and spit, Erend doesn’t deserve these men.

 

****

 

Step two.

Well. He's still working on step two.

 

****

 

Step three. He thinks step three might actually be fundamental to step two.

The healer had said talking would help, but Erend has no one to talk to. He can’t talk to Avad, he can’t talk to Talanah, and he can’t talk to his men.

What he really needs is some distance.

He starts going up to the Spire. He doesn’t go every night, because it’s far enough outside the city walls that going alone isn't really a good idea, and he doesn’t always feel like fending off the Glinthawks that harry the path.

He makes himself go when the nightmares get bad. The hike burns the terror from his muscles, and by the time he gets to the top, he’s solidly welded back into his body. He sits amid the ruins, sucking on the painfully spicy seeds he keeps in his pockets, and tries to breathe.

He doesn’t have anyone to talk to, so he talks to himself. Some nights, he’s addressing Ersa; others, it’s Aloy. Neither of them deserve to carry his burdens along with his own, but there’s something comforting in imagining that one of there. Ersa is brusque, fond but stern. Aloy cuts through the slag with a wary kindness.

He sees Aloy dead. He sees her bleeding. He sees her screaming and burnt. He sees every possible death that she could suffer, and he feels the hot slick of blood on his hands every single time.

He knows he can't really hurt her. He's got strength and bulk, but she's got speed and flexibility. He's seen her take down machines he didn't think could be taken, and he's seen her wipe the sweat from her brow and act like it's nothing.

He’s _tired_ of seeing her this way, subject to the many tortures his sadistic subconscious. He wants to see her grin. He wants to watch as she disappears into the tall grass. He wants to enjoy the sway of knotted rope over Nora furs. He wants to eat a meal with her and listen to whatever she wants to talk about.

He wants to be in love like any normal sot. He wants to buy her sweets and offer her flowers. He wants to go back to dreaming about her naked and splendid. He wants to wheedle kisses, and he wants her to laugh and shove him away.

He hopes she’s okay, and fire and spit, he misses her so very, very, very much.

 

****

 

Then, an agent comes from the Embrace, and the news is devastating.

“There’s almost nothing left,” the man reports. He’s still dressed like a Nora, blue paint and expertly-crafted leathers, but his accent gives him away as Carja. “Eclipse machines came through and just...everything is destroyed. Everything’s burned.”

Erend feels his stomach climb into his throat. He remembers the wail of grief after the Proving, a sound that he can still feel in the thin bones of his chest-

“What of the Nora?” Avad asks sharply. “Have any survived?”

The agent shakes his head. “A few. I couldn’t tell how many. They fought harder than anything I’ve ever seen, but they were pushed back to All-Mother. My partner fell to a Corrupted Scrapper, and I couldn’t stay. Nowhere is safe. The gates of the Embrace are burned to the ground.”

She wasn’t there. She couldn’t have been. She’d been at Sunfall-

The agent is dismissed, and Avad looks to Marad, deep weariness in his eyes. “Do you know anything else?”

The spymaster shakes his head. “Kallen was the one I’ve heard from.” He doesn’t say how many agents he had. “If the invasion force came from Sunfall, they went south of Free Heap.”

Avad looks to Erend. “Despite what those of in the west may think, the Nora are anything but weak. How could an army capable of wreaking such destruction escape our notice?”

“Machines,” Erend says, remembering the Corrupted area they’d skirted around on the way to Pitchcliff, and Aloy’s pale face. “A Corrupted machine fights ten times as hard.” He thinks of metalburn, of blood on his hands and the hard strength of her body as she twisted against him- “They wouldn’t need a huge force,” he makes himself say. “And if they Corrupted the machines when they got to the Embrace, we couldn’t have seen anything.”

_Please be okay. Please, please, please be okay._

“Send a small force,” Avad says to Marad. “Prioritize stealth over strength, at least until we know what we’re up against. The Nora are too proud to ask for aid, but we owe them a blood debt for the crimes committed during the Red Raids. Help them as you can, and then report back.”

“Aloy,” Erend croaks, because he can’t _not,_  not when her name is swelling up in throat.

“Kallen left too early,” Marad says gently. “And bless the sun that he did. If he had stayed to die, we wouldn’t even know the Nora were attacked.”

 

****

 

The Oseram aren’t exactly known for stealth. There’s no point in hiding when the best way to defeat an enemy is to hit them square in the chest. Still, Erend rounds up the five of his men he thinks most likely to helpful, and sends them along with Marad’s agent. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he tells them. “These cultists have machines you can’t even imagine, and they just took out an entire tribe. Your job is to protect the sneaky guys. But...if you get in a bind, you know what to do.”

Tandin’s grin is almost feral. “Hit ‘em like a hammer until they can’t hit back!”

He’s proud of that, despite himself. “And make sure you come back. Don’t make me train up another set of idiots.”

Hours later, Erend’s walking the walls, too keyed up to sleep and too anxious to sit still. He finds Avad on one of the upper balconies, staring at the snow-capped mountains far in the east.

“It’ll be days before we hear,” Avad says quietly. “There’s no way to know where the Eclipse will strike next.”

“Marad’s men are good,” Erend says. “And mine are even better.”

They stand in silence, watching the bats dart in and out of the soft lantern glow in the lower terraces. The evening sky is clear, the moon heavy and full.

“I can’t apologize for my words,” Avad finally says, “nor their tone. I can only apologize for the pain they caused.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” Erend says. “You were right. I’m just sorry it needed to be said.”

“Change isn’t an easy thing.” The Sun King leans on the balcony railing, the tall crown of his station catching the moon in its bright plates. “It’s been my unfortunate experience that it doesn’t come without violence.” He glances over. “You, my friend, know that better than most.”

He knows. Erend is brute force and solid muscle. He isn’t Ersa, and he’s realizing he shouldn’t try to be. He’s slowly clawing his way to being something other than his father’s useless, drunken son. He has men who follow him without question. He has the confidence of a king, one who trusts him even after all his mistakes.

He hopes, he _desperately_ hopes, that out there amid the chaos of the world, there’s still a red-haired Nora brave willing to give him two minutes of her time.


	15. Chapter 15

Of all the things Erend doesn’t expect, the Nora war party is definitely high on the list. They appear out of the jungle like a morning mist, and immediately set up camp across the river from the royal maizelands. With them come Marad’s spies and the small Vanguard contingent led by Tandin.

The Nora refuse to come inside the city walls, and Avad’s council regards them with wary curiosity from Meridian’s terraces. “The War-Chief is Sona,” Tandin says, pointing down at a tall, imposing woman, but even if Tandin hadn’t said, Erend would have known immediately. She carries herself with hard authority of someone far too familiar with the ugly violence of the world.

“Why are they here?” Avad asks. “It's no small thing for a Nora to go beyond their borders. The ones who leave are not allowed back in.”

“They fought off the invasion,” Marad’s agent says, his voice cracking with disbelief. “They’re adamant their Anointed One swept in and single-handedly took down a Thunderjaw-”

“Aloy,” says Erend. “It was Aloy.”

The agent blinks. “Yes, that's her name. By the sun, how did you know?”

Of course it is. Of _course_ it is, and those blue-painted assholes are calling her Anointed, when they were the ones who cast her out-

“Where is she now? Is she with the war party? Is she down in the camp?” He clenches his jaw shut, because if he doesn’t, the hot, angry slag is just going to continue pouring out.

“She’s a valuable resource to the Sundom,” Avad adds. “Her whereabouts are of grave importance.”

“I’m sure she’s not with the war party,” the agent says with great chagrin. “They speak of her with enough deference, we’d know.” Belatedly, Erend realizes the spymaster keeps his agents compartmentalized; losing a single link won’t bring down the whole set of chainmail. Just because Aloy has been Erend’s sole point of light doesn't mean everyone else is desperately searching for her.

He can't decide if that makes him feel better or worse.

The agent is still talking. “War-Chief Sona stated only that the Nora had been directed to come to Meridian. She hasn't elaborated, and none of her braves are willing to speak to outsiders.”

“Aloy told them to come here.” Marad frowns, rubbing somberly at his chin. “The Nora don’t leave, and yet they came. I find it disturbing.”

Avad looks at Erend. “Do you know anything at all? Has Aloy ever told you something that would explain this?”

They’d talked in Brightmarket. She’d taken the jewel - the Focus - off her head, and explained about the machine demon, about the end of the world. She’d been looking for something in Sunfall, and she’d brought down the entire city in the process.

The Eclipse killed everyone at Aloy’s Proving just because she was there. Now, they’ve burnt the entire Embrace to the ground. Whatever larger forces are at work, regardless of whether or not she’d found what she was looking for, Aloy’s very existence is enough of a threat that the Eclipse tried to annihilate an entire tribe.

 _I’m faster on my own_.

He doesn’t know enough to explain it. He didn’t understand half of what she was saying when she told him, but it doesn’t matter. The most important thing is that the Eclipse want Aloy dead, and Erend is suddenly very, very sure he’s not going to tell anyone her secrets.

“What do you know?” Avad repeats.

Erend looks his king in the eye. “Nothing.”

Avad knows. Erend can see it in his face, but there’s no anger, just a tight disappointment.

Marad turns to Tandin. “And the Nora have no idea where she went?”

The Vanguardsman shakes his head. “If they do, they won’t say. They’re mad enough they’re here, but she's their Anointed. They’re pretty clear they won’t talk to ‘outsiders’.”

Erend will fight them. He’ll fight ever last one of them. She doesn’t belong to them. They have no right to claim her now, not after they’d thrown her away at birth-

“Keep talking with them,” Avad instructs. “Whatever’s happening - whatever Aloy knows - we’ll need them as allies.”

 

****

 

Erend is the closest thing Avad has to a War-Chief, and so he finds himself taking the great elevator down to the maizelands.

“You're Oseram,” the Nora leader says flatly. “Not Carja.”

“Vanguard,” Erend says. “Personal defenders of the fourteenth Sun King. We answer to him and no one else.”

She narrows her eyes. “Much blood was spilled from both our tribes, and yet you choose to remain?”

“I serve Avad,” Erend says firmly. “My sister led the army that helped him retake Meridian, and now I lead in her place.”

“And where is she?”

He is a fortress, built on solid bedrock. He is immovable and strong. “Eighteen months dead,” he makes himself say, and then, because this woman is a warrior: “She fell in battle.”

Sona’s coal-dark eyes don’t change. “May the Goddess honor her sacrifice.”

The rest of the exchange is inane and useless, trivial diplomatic overtures and offers of Meridian supplies that are coldly rebuffed. Erend locks himself inside the cage of his ribs and stands with hard steel in his spine. He thinks of Aloy, of fire and heat and light. He’d been right the day before her Proving: she hadn’t belonged. He just hadn’t understood _how badly_.

He's chafed against the cosmopolitan assessment that the Nora are savages, but there's no other word for them, not after what they did to Aloy.

Finally, when it becomes clear the conversation is over, he tries one last thing. These are Aloy’s people despite everything, and if he’s trying to be worthy of her time, he can at least be civil to their traitorous faces. “If I can make a suggestion?”

Sona frowns. “Speak.”

“I’m not gonna tell you where to camp,” Erend says, “but the place you’ve got right now is going to bake during the day. You don’t get heat like this in the mountains. You’re better off further that way.” He gestures up the river. “You’ll get the morning sun, but the butte will give you shade in the afternoon. You’ll miss the noise from the wharf, and the Snapjaws usually don’t come up this far - not,” he adds quickly, “that you can’t handle a few Snapjaws. They’ll just be downriver if you get the urge.”

Sona considers.

“Striders tend to wander through here,” Erend says. “Maybe a herd of Chargers, but not as often. It’s as safe a place as you can find outside of the city walls.”

She’s silent a long time, and he’s about to spit at her feet and stalk off when she finally replies. “Our knowledge of these lands is severely lacking. We’re far beyond borders we never thought we’d cross.”

“I know.” He’s gritting his teeth, and by some miracle of fate, his words are calm and devoid of sarcasm. He almost sounds _sympathetic._

“We’ll move our camp,” Sona says. “And...thank you for your kindness.”

“We’re all here for Aloy,” he says, and maybe she didn’t know, because a muscle at her temple shudders in surprise. He should not feel as triumphant as he does. “Trust me, it’s not a kindness at all.”

 

****

 

It figures that when the end of the world actually happens, Erend doesn’t have any pants on.

He’s just gotten out of the bath, a hard day’s sweat and grime scrubbed off his skin, when there’s a furious pounding on his door.

“Get to the Spire,” Marad’s agent orders. “Take the cannons. Go _now_.”

He’s never seen fear in one of Marad’s agents. He sees a lot of fear right now.

“What is it?” He shouldn’t question orders, not when they clearly come right from Avad, not when they’re delivered with a trembling hitch.

_Your king needs you._

“Invasion,” Marad’s agent breathes. “The Eclipse is coming from the west with machines.” And then, “The Nora huntress - she said to protect the Spire.”

Erend’s heart stops beating, and when it thunders back to life, he _runs._

He scrambles his men, every last one of them, and they come without hesitation. They stood fast with their cannons during the liberation, and whatever they’re up against now, they’ll stand fast again. Whatever they’re up against, they can take the hit. Whatever they’re up against, Aloy is here, and Erend feels lit up like a beacon. He’s thick sinew and solid muscle. He’s a wall of steel, heavy and determined. He is the Captain of the Vanguard, and if anything gets past him, it’s going to be over his dead body and the pile of corpses he’s taken with him.

“WHERE DO THEY PUT US?” he roars.

Fifty voices rise up like the boiling air of an oncoming storm. “AT THE FRONT OF THE LINE.”

He isn’t Ersa, and he doesn’t know what’s coming, but whatever it is, he has to be good enough. He _will_ be good enough.

Aloy is here. Now is when she needs him, and by the forge, he will not fail her. He isn’t incompetent. He isn’t drunk. He’s Ersa’s younger brother, the heir to her might and fury. He is brute force and solid muscle, and he is fucking unstoppable.  

For Aloy, he can be _anything._

 

****

 

Nothing’s out there. Not yet, not that he can see. The horizon is peaceful and empty. The sky is a moody purple, the air dense with impending rain. Below the butte, the jungle stretches out lush and green, birds wheeling unworried between the trees.

“What’s going on, Cap?” Nyler asks.

“We show these Carja what a real fight looks like,” Erend says grimly. There isn’t even the hint of anything amiss, but he can see across the valley that Carja soldiers are lining the battlements. The flames of their lanterns flicker soft and orange in the sultry air. “Anyone tries to take the Spire, we shut ‘em down.”

“The Spire,” Tandin says doubtfully. “Cap, _why_?”

“Aloy said to.” It’s a strange pillar, a dead remnant of the Ancient Ones, but if Aloy says it’s important, he will set his feet in the red mud of this butte and stand firm.

His men nod and square their shoulders. Even if the majority of them hadn’t gone to Pitchcliff, the ones who did made sure everyone heard about Aloy. They’re all Oseram, so the stories get bigger with each retelling: the Sawtooths she’d tamed, the Ravagers she’d driven off, the Stormbird she’d single-handedly taken down.

Even if they didn’t know, even if they hadn’t heard the stories, they’re all romantic bungs down to a man. They know exactly how besotted Erend is without him saying a word, and they are worse than old women in playing matchmaker. He supposes it’s an indication of their loyalty, and it would be sweet if it weren’t so damn annoying.  

As expected, Kip pipes up. “Cap, is she here? Is she really here?”

“You gotta kiss her this time, Captain,” Nyler says. “At least just a little.”

“Shut up,” Erend grumbles, and points at the man’s cannon. “Check your fuse.”

Night falls. If the order had come from anyone else, the men would be chafing at the silence, but because it’s Aloy, they keep watch.

She’s here. She’s across the valley. She’s in Meridian, or she’s on the ridge with the Carja troops. She’s closer than she’s been in almost a double handful of weeks, and Erend feels like he’s been doused in metalburn, uncomfortably warm and inescapably prickly. He doesn’t know what he’s going to say, and he needs to be alert. He can’t let his mind wander.

 _Your king needs you_.

Aloy needs him.

A rumble of distant thunder startles him into a twitch, and he suddenly realizes: this is his purpose. This is the bedrock he’s been searching for. He serves his king and he serves the woman he loves, and there’s a warm, calming strength that bleeds into his limbs. He’s been waiting for this. He’s been tearing himself apart trying to find out who he is, but _this._ This is who he’s been the whole time.

Aloy will find him, or she won’t. The invasion will come, or it won’t. He’ll die tomorrow, or he won’t. It doesn’t matter. He’s Ersa’s little brother, the one who takes uncertainty and turns it into a weapon. He’s his father’s son, the one who’s taken the thick vines of a failed clan and wrapped them around his hands like boxing leathers.

_You damn well better._

He damn well is.


	16. Chapter 16

It's well after midnight, everything damp under a steady drizzle. The Vanguard has been camped on the butte for half a day on high alert with no action and even less information, and even though right now all is calm, Erend knows that sooner or later, the strain will show. His men don’t take to boredom easily, not like the Carja city guard, the ones who can slouch at their posts for hours without complaint.

Erend puts his hands up to his mouth. “Hey, you lot! Gather up.” When he’s got them, he crosses his arms. “Okay, guys. It’s quiet right now but we’ve gotta be ready.”

“We don’t even know what we’re up against,” Kip whines.

Erend frowns. “What was it that Ersa always said?”

Everyone falls quiet, and he can’t decide if it’s out of deference for their dead leader, or out of shy reticence. He swallows back a spurt of annoyance. “Look, even I know this one. She taught all of us, and if it made it into my drunk skull, I know for a fact it made it into yours.”

“Knowledge is your sharpest weapon,” Adar says firmly from the edge of the group, when no one else speaks. His hands are tucked at the small of his back, his posture military-perfect.

Erend points at his second. “Exactly. So if we don’t know what we’re up against, what _do_ we know?”

There’s a lot of head scratching, and then Tandin says slowly, “We have to prepare for _everything_?”

“We have to be flexible,” Erend agrees. “Eclipse - we know them.”

“Eclipse,” Nyler says. “What does that even mean?”

“It’s when the moon goes in front of the sun, idiot,” Erend says, exasperated, because Nyler’s been here in Meridian just as long as any of them, and fire and spit, he should _know_ by now.

Kagget frowns. “That supposed to sound scary or something?”

“They used to be Carja.” Tandin snorts. “Carja are always yammering about sun and shade.”

Kagget snorts. “If they used to be Carja, how tough can they be?” There’s a murmur of general agreement, a few solid thumps of fists against shields. “Their best guys are dressed like _birds,_ ” he goes on, warming to the subject. “We’ll tear their little feathers off!”

Erend is losing them, so he puts his fingers to his mouth for one short, sharp whistle. “Oi! Let’s not get cocky. Carja, Eclipse - yeah, we know how to lop a head. We’ve got cannons, and we’re the _best_ at what we do. That’s not the challenge. The challenge is the machines Eclipse are bringing with them.”

“Aloy,” Kip pipes up. He looks around at his fellows. “She took down a Sawtooth - I _saw_ it-”

“Enough.” Erend clears his throat. “We’re not looking at a lone Sawtooth, guys. We’re looking at an army of Shadow Carja desperate to retake Meridian. Now, the Carja guard can probably deal with their own-” there’s a round of derisive snorts- “ _enough,_ you idiots. The point is that they’ll take out the easy ones, and we _need_ that from them because we’re up here to defend against the _real_ threat.”

“The Spire,” Tandin says. “But if Eclipse doesn't want the Spire-”

“Aloy said to hold the Spire, so we hold it,” Erend says. “If the Eclipse don’t want it, that means there are machines that _do_. Knowledge is our sharpest weapon, and we need to turn what we don’t know into an asset.”

“Machines,” Kagget says. “Like what, Captain?”

“Watchers. Scrappers. Sawtooths. Birds.”

“Birds?” Tandin says doubtfully.

“Birds,” Erend confirms. “Glinthawks. Stormbirds. There’s only one path up, but you think they’re gonna just line up for us to hit them? They’ll come at us from the air. We're gonna get hit with everything they've got. Machines we've never even seen. Machines _no one’s_ ever seen.”

Everyone is silent. He’s scared them, and they _should_ be scared. Erend is scared. Aloy is here, somewhere in Meridian or somewhere close, and even though his whole body is ringing with want, he’s very, very worried about what her presence means.

“The machines,” Kip tries. “Aloy can-”

_It’s an avalanche, and one wrong move will destroy everything._

Erend absolutely trusts her ability to figure all this out, but he’s also not naive. He’s haunted by the red flag of her hair whipping in frozen wind, but more haunted by what would have happened if he hadn’t found her.

Aloy’s here somewhere. She told them to hold this damn butte, and they fucking _will._

“We are the _Vanguard,"_  Erend snaps. “Three years ago, this is who we chose to be. We took our cannons and we brought Mad King Jiran’s Meridian to its knees. The entire _city."_

He’s getting slow nods. They’re with him, and he needs to set them on fire. “Now, I’m not saying this is going to be easy, but since when have we ever chosen _easy_ ? That’s not who we are. That’s not what we _do_ . We’re gonna get hit with everything they’ve got, but _we can take that hit._  We’re gonna take that hit, and then what are we going to do?”

“Hit ‘em back!”

“Exactly. Keep your shield up. Don't spare your potions,” Erend tells them. “Don’t stop moving.” He squares his shoulders, and the voice that comes out is Erend, the Captain of the Vanguard. Erend, personal guard of the fourteenth Sun King. “It’s gonna be a hard fight, but guys, that’s what we do.”

Erend, Ersa’s little brother. He’s never actually been proud of that. He’s always seen himself as a liability, a dangling reminder of the family shame, but now, he’s standing at the base of the Spire, the fifty best men from the Claim looking up at him with blood in their eyes and fire in their bones. Damn right, he’s Ersa’s little brother. “ _That’s what we do!"_

Fifty fists thump hard against fifty chests, the sound rolling like thunder.

 

****

 

Night creeps on. Erend sleeps a little, and for once the nightmares aren’t specific, just vaguely threatening shapes that lurk at the corner of his vision. He doesn’t even startle when Adar wakes him for the watch.

There’s still nothing on the horizon. He leans on the railing, absently gnawing on a crusty cornmeal biscuit and contemplating the sharp drop below. The clouds are thick, disparate lumps, giving no hint as to the day’s forecast. Meridian is gray with shadow, the sky the barest hint of pink above the eastern jungle.

Something’s coming. Something big. He’s not sure how he hopes this will go down. If the world is going to end, he wants to get it over with. He knows the moment when muscle fails, and right now, he’s staggering under the weight of the unknown.  

He’s so lost in thought he doesn’t even see her come up, but out of nowhere, Aloy is standing at his shoulder. “Daybreak,” she says quietly. “Yesterday’s gone.”

Everything explodes in his head at once. She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and fire and spit, it’s good to see her, it’s _so good_ , but why is she up here, why is-

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t _matter_ -

If Erend doesn’t immediately sweep her up in his arms, it’s because his armor suddenly weighs more than a Thunderjaw, and he’s forgotten how to breathe.

She’s wearing a fine suit of what the smiths call Arrow-breaker, and fire and spit, the sight of her in the leather and steel of his people is like a lightning bolt from his brain to his groin. It’s more than he can handle - the appearance of her, the way the pauldrons wrap around her shoulders like a lover’s embrace, how tall and _fierce_ she is - and when he opens his mouth, he’s _so_ annoyed at what spills out: “Thought you said Oseram steel was too heavy.”

Erend’s hoping for a smirk, but all he gets is a weary sigh. “We’ve got heavy opposition.” Aloy runs a hand down one of the thick leather panels, and he realizes it’s split into smaller strips. The patina has a tingling shimmer, something that he doesn’t recognize but instantly knows as Ancient. “I did have it modified for better movement.”

She looks...well, she looks like she could use a good meal and about a week’s uninterrupted sleep. She looks like she’s been boiled down to bare sinew, and there’s no room left for anything else. There’s a deep gash on her forehead, the stitches fresh and dark, and a half-healed scar he doesn’t recognize along the line of her jaw. She smells like stale blood and hard travel.

He’s suddenly seized with the urge to just grab her and run. They can go away. They can go deep into the Claim, or even beyond. They can hide in a cave somewhere and have a dozen children while the rest of the world burns. He’ll curl around her at night, and there will be a hearth, bright and warm-

She isn’t like that, and because she isn’t, neither is he.

“By the forge,” he says, his heart lodged in his throat. “It’s good to see you.”

Something in her face lights up, a small flame erupting in the darkness, and he’s never been so glad to see the tiniest bit of joy. “It’s good to see you, too.”

Far behind him, one of the men snickers, and fire and spit, this is the _wrong time._  

“Which is it this time?” he hears himself ask. “Tracking killers or mastering machines?”

“Both,” she says. “As usual. Are you up for this?”

“Steel before iron,” he says immediately. “But in this case...ladies first.”

That earns him the smirk, and he almost leaves his body.

She can’t stay. The Nora are here, a tight knot of disapproval near the edge of the butte. Despite everything, they’re still her clan, and he shouldn’t feel good about having spoken with her first, but he does.

He _definitely_ watches, both because he’s ready to jump to her defense, his knuckles white around the haft of his axe, and also because he’s _starving_ for the sight of her. She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and he doesn’t deserve a minute of her time, but fire and spit, he _wants_ it. She’s right here, she’s _right here-_

She doesn’t linger with her people, and starts walking a long circuit around the top of the butte. Over the last few hours, an impressively diverse string of irregulars have gathered amid the ruins. She stops at each group, spending a moment to check in before moving on.

When she’s done, Aloy comes back to him. He doesn’t deserve this, not when there are dozens of other people here in her name, but the relief is thick in his throat. She’s twitching like a nervous Strider, desperate to be away and gone; this has always been her fight, but now she has an army, and she has absolutely no idea what to do with it. She’s never had anyone, and now she’s surrounded.  

“Hey,” he says as she gets close. His entire body is screaming to touch her, wildly keening to crush the space between them. He wants to kiss color back into her lips, to run his fingers through her hair until the thick strands fall loose from crusts of dried blood and stray brambles. Her Oseram armor is a breathtaking novelty, but it's not _her_. It's too heavy to slide beneath a Sawtooth, too cumbersome to disappear in the tall grass. He misses the gentle sway of knotted rope over Nora furs, and the swift escape it promises.

 _I love you_ , he thinks. _What do you need? What can I do?_

This feels like his worst day wanting a drink. His hands are shaking, but he has no idea what to say. She could be anywhere else, and she’s chosen to come back to him, and fire and spit, he’s not _worth_ this, but he wants to be. By the forge, he wants to be.

She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, but she looks ragged. “This may be the first time I've seen you when you're not actively bleeding.” He pauses. “...you're not actively bleeding, right?”

Aloy considers. “Not at the moment, no.”

“Passively bleeding?”

“I make no promises.”

“That's fair. So the, um.” Erend gestures to his own jaw, mimicking the fresh scar that stretches from her chin to her ear. “That’s a hell of a beauty mark.”

“Thunderjaw,” she offers.

He snorts. “What is it with you and Thunderjaws? Should I stage an intervention?”

There's something burning in her eyes, and _fuck_ , he has to shove his hands in his armpits to keep himself from just grabbing her and-

“I can help,” Charming Oaf says. “I'm an expert at quitting. I’ve quit drinking a dozen times. I can give you you all kinds of tips.”

“I'll take them,” she says seriously. Her lips twist. “Erend...I’ve got to talk to the people down below. If there's time-”

If there's time before the invasion.

“Don’t feel obligated,” he says quickly, “but-” _I love you I love you I love you-_ “you know nothing improves the end of the world like casual conversation with a pretty girl.”

Something small and hopeful rises in her face, along with a shadow of fond annoyance.

“Two minutes,” he reminds her. “Now go - be a War-Chief.”

She scowls. “Don’t you _dare._ ”

Oh, he dares. “Savior. Exalted. _Anointed."_

She hits him in the shoulder, and _fire and spit,_  she throws a good punch, but it’s worth it for the way she rolls her eyes.

It’s so very, very worth it.


	17. Chapter 17

The rest of the day passes. Erend drills his men. He stares at the horizon. He watches the rain.  

He’s resigned himself to not seeing her again; not before the battle, and possibly not ever, not with the heavy tension in the air.

He hopes she's getting some sleep. He hopes she's somewhere quiet, somewhere where she can sit and breathe.

He thinks of tall grass, glowbugs drifting between the stalks. He thinks of the way she’d taken her bedroll and disappeared before his eyes.

He hopes she's found a way to hide.

This isn't for him. He's brute strength and solid muscle. He's the Captain of the Vanguard, and the only way he can disappear is into himself. He wants to shield her, but she's made it very clear she takes her own hits.

The things that are coming are cultists, monsters, and demons, the worst of the Ancient Ones risen from cold, dead earth. He doesn’t know what it’s going to take to defeat them. Aloy said someone named Elisabet Sobek had figured out a superweapon, and the Eclipse think Aloy looks just like Elisabet Sobek, so maybe Aloy has that weapon under her command, too.

He doesn’t know what he’s more afraid of: that she doesn’t, or that she _does_.

 

****

 

The sun breaks through the clouds, and everything goes from gray and damp to a diffuse, steamy brightness as the water evaporates from the stone. Erend sees something glimmer across the valley, and for one weightless moment, he thinks that the invasion has finally begun.

It's nothing, just a thick flock of birds rising from the trees, and he's almost _disappointed._

Battlements are further fortified. Weapons are sharpened. Armor is oiled. Idle soldiers play dice.

During the Liberation, there were days like this. Then, they'd been under-equipped and under-supported, and every day without a fight meant one more day until they made it to Meridian, one more day stretching already-thin supplies and equally thin nerves. Avad had been just as grubby as the rest of them, and he and Ersa spent hours poring over maps and battle plans, frantically trying to eke a victory out of their combined knowledge. Avad had known the Carja strength, and Ersa knew how to fight and win. Days like this, it hadn't seemed like enough.

Erend wonders if that's when it began, if he hadn't seen what kindled between them because he'd been young and tired and hungry. He wonders if it had started as comfort between two desperate people, or if was the acknowledgement of something inevitable, something that should have lasted a lifetime.

He hadn’t wanted to think about these things. He _doesn’t_ want to imagine his sister and Avad, not at _all_ , but the closer he is to sober, the longer he stands on his own two feet, the more questions he has.

He almost wants to ask Avad what it was like to fall in love with his general, but he’s afraid of what the answer will be. All the moments Erend’s looked at Aloy and wondered, wanted, _hoped_ …

The more Erend considers it, the more unfair it seems. He doesn’t doubt it was painful for Avad to sacrifice his relationship on the altar of his duty, but it was _so_ unfair that a woman like Erend’s sister had to stay hidden in the shadows. Even if it's what she'd chosen, Ersa deserved better, and if Erend had known, if he hadn't such a useless drunk, he'd have said so.

It probably wouldn't have changed anything, but he might have felt a little better.

At the end of this - if there's an end, if they're all still standing when it's over - Aloy will probably go back to the Embrace. She's the Anointed, and despite everything, the Nora are her people. They’ve claimed her, and he _knows_ she hates that, but he’s not sure she won’t eventually crumble. Even if he manages to untie his tongue, and even if she somehow miraculously accepts him, the Nora never will.

She'll be the leader, and he won't even be the lover in the shadows. The Carja grudgingly made room in the Sundom for the Oseram; the Nora won’t even do that. It had been a hard fight even getting Avad’s messenger into the Embrace. He’s Oseram, so that’s not _quite_ as bad as being Carja, but...he sees the way the Nora huddle together at the edge of the butte, their loathing palpable.

He's an idiot to hope. It's almost embarrassing, this impossibly romantic notion that he can sweep Aloy away to a life of...doing what? Running like fugitives? Holed up in some distant place, playing at being simple farmers and slowly dying of boredom?

She's more than that, so much, much more. She's wildfire and the sharp snap of dry brush as it leaps amid the flames. She's a lantern in the coldest, darkest night, a steady beacon of light and Iife and safety.

 _I love you_ , he thinks, and for the first time, he realizes that loving her absolutely means letting her go.

 

****

 

It was humid before, but with the afternoon sun comes even thicker heat. Above the Spire, a tentative blue bleeds through the clouds. If the mist burns off entirely, the weather might almost be tolerable, and Erend hopes the clearer sky means the spotters at Evening's Light will see the invasion as soon as it crests the horizon.

If it was anyone else but Aloy, he'd call slag. He'd been called to rush his men to the Spire more than a day ago, and he’s starting to itch; maybe the threat only seems less imminent because he's growing numb to it. From anyone else, he'd question the orders, but it's Aloy. He's seen what she can do. He's seen what she considers trivial.

He absolutely believes this invasion is coming, and that it will be worse than anything anyone's ever seen.

On impulse, he breaks his men into two groups, and sends half his cannons down to the terraces outside the city. He needs the walk, so he goes with them to supervise setup, and immediately runs into a familiar face.

“Erend!” Petra Forgewoman is the same she’s ever been: stout, forthright, and with an irresistible twinkle in her eye. “Captain of the Vanguard now. Look at you, all grown up.”

He hasn’t seen her since the Liberation, and three years of sun and sand in Free Heap have done nothing but deepen her laugh lines. “Here for the cannons?”

“Here to make them _better_ ,” she corrects him. “When I’m done, even a Ravager won’t stand a chance.”

There’s a good couple of hours where he helps her swap out fuses and adjust astragals and fillets. “Breaks my heart about Ersa,” she murmurs, bending close to clean out a vent. “Good woman. Best thing that’s ever come out of the Claim.”

He doesn’t trust himself to speak, so he just nods.

Petra stands up and puts her hands to the small of her back, stretching. “Chatter is that this is the end of the world,” she says cheerfully. “But I heard my girl Aloy’s leading this rowdy group, so I think we’ll be just fine.”

“You know Aloy?” It’s supposed to be a casual question, dammit, but his voice hitches half an octave near the end, and Petra’s eyes light up. “I mean,” he tries, but she’s already shaking her head with a chuckle.  

“Boy, it’s written all over your face.” She grins. “Yeah, she came through a few months back. Took care of some bandits and some knuckleheads, then headed back into the wild. That’s not something one does without pay, and you know me, I all but begged her to stay on.”

Erend does indeed know Petra. More specifically, he knows Petra and her boundless affection for pretty girls, and he would have paid _so_ many shards to see the flattery she’d heaped on Aloy.

“Look,” Petra says, clapping a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Erend, I knew you when you were a small ember in a big fire, and I’m sorry to say, the stuff I’ve heard out of Meridian isn’t exactly complimentary.”

“Haven’t been my best,” he admits.

“Well, you look better than what I’ve heard,” she says, assessing him with a frank eye. “You’re thicker steel than the forge that made you. Don’t forget that.”

“Working on it,” he promises.

“That’s my boy.” She winks, and leans in. “Now, you’ll never believe what I’ve done to reinforce these bores.”

 

****

 

When his men are all patiently suffering under Petra’s endlessly-cheerful litany of upgrades, Erend heads back up the butte. He’s barely back to what has become his usual post when he sees Aloy make her way across the plaza.  

She gets caught by the Nora, of course, but _oh_ , as she’s being reeled in she glances his way, a brief flicker of contact.

His heart doesn’t fit in his chest. It’s lodged against his ribs, squeezing the breath from his lungs.

He doesn't stare. He _doesn't_. He's Captain of the Vanguard, and a grown man. He can mind his own business, except he _totally can't_ because it's Aloy, and the moth doesn't choose whether or not it's drawn by the flame.

“You forgot to kiss her,” Tandin advises sagely.

“I _didn’t_ forget-” and he’s blundered right into the most obvious trap in the _entire world_ , and Tandin’s entire face instantly ignites in gleeful triumph.

“Shut up,” Erend growls. “Just - shut up.”

“Not a word,” the Vanguardsman promises, but that’s a damn _lie_ , and he’s all but skipping away.

Fire and spit, Erend's never going to live this down.

 

****

 

The shadows are growing long by the time she actually makes it over to him.

“I thought that would never end,” Aloy says, heaving a sigh. “...am I interrupting?”

“You? Never.”

“I didn’t think so.” One side of her mouth quirks up in an impish smile. “You’ve been watching me all afternoon.”

“I’m the Captain of the Vanguard,” he says in a wounded tone. “It’s my job to watch.”

“Well,” she says. “In that case, I suppose it’s good you’ve got my back. And...everything else.”

Guilty as charged, and totally called out. “You, um, don't mind, do you?”

She gives him a strange, inscrutable look. “No,” she finally says. “I don't think I do.”

Now he _really_ can't breathe.

“Your face,” she says smugly, and fire and spit, he is so in love, and he’ll turn however many shades of red he needs to make her smile like that.

When he recovers enough to speak, he points to the balustrade. “Come sit? The view’s great from the wall.” He offers up one of the cornmeal biscuits. “Eat something.”

She takes the biscuit and stares at it. “You put it in your mouth,” he says, pantomiming, “and then chew.”

“Haven’t really eaten anything today,” she admits. “Everyone needs something, and they need me to figure it out for them.”

Fire and spit, he hates being one of those people, but he can’t quite make himself regret it. “Yeah, but I’m feeding you.”

“You don’t count,” she says bluntly.

“Ow,” he says. “I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not.”

It’s quiet on the battlements. Across the valley, Meridian glows in the setting sun, the rooftop vents turning slowly in the breeze. The stone is mostly dry, and he heaves himself up onto the balustrade, his thick armor making the movement even more awkward. She follows suit much more gracefully, stretching her legs out on the wall between them.

By the forge, it’s so good to see her. This is Aloy. _Aloy_ , who is light and heat. This might be the end of the world, but she’s sitting _right here._

He’s Erend, Captain of the Vanguard. He’s Erend, Ersa’s heir. He has the confidence of the Sun King and there are fifty of the best men from the Claim looking to him for guidance. He’s been broken, but he’s working _so hard_ on welding those pieces together into a shape that isn’t a complete failure, and he’s actually succeeding.

He is so wildly, madly in love he can’t even breathe.

She picks at the biscuit, scattering cornmeal in her lap. She still looks exhausted, and where she’s sitting, she has one eye on the Nora and the other on the horizon.

“How are you?” Erend makes himself ask, because she’s curled in on herself and _I love you_ would just hit her like a weapon.

“There are so many people,” she says. “Marad said they came here for me, all of them. He said they’re here in my name.”

“Of course they came.” Bright, painful anger flares up in her face, and he forges ahead. “Aloy, you’ve done amazing things.”

“I did small favors. Why are they here?”

“Gratitude,” he says, and adds, “Finding Ersa was no small favor.”

She doesn’t have an answer for that.

“Of course we’re here for this,” Erend says. “Of course we’re here for you.” He takes a breath. “ _I’m_ here for you.”

“Thank you,” she says quietly.

They’re silent awhile, and then she frowns. “You look _much_ better than when I saw you in Brightmarket.”

“I’m doing alright.” This is an occasion for Charming Oaf, and since she doesn't  _mind_ , he lets his eyes slide down her body. “I guarantee I don’t look as good as you, though.”

“You’re the worst,” she says, but there’s enough of an indignant spark in her voice he knows he’s on the right track.

“I mean, I know I’m handsome, but by the forge, I feel like a muddy lout right now. You’re really making the rest of us look bad.”

“You know you look fine,” she retorts.

“She says I look _fine_.” Erend grins. “That means she likes me.”

Aloy shoves his knee with her foot.

She’s still not back to herself, not the way he wants her to be, so he keeps nattering. “So, uh, heard from Petra that you went through Free Heap.”

Something like the shadow of a smile twitches at her lips. “Petra Forgewoman. I like her.” She glances back to the encampment. “I’m surprised she’s here.”

“Everyone’s here.” The tension in his body is getting unbearable; he stretches and cracks his neck. “I haven’t been to Free Heap since they started. The way Petra runs things, I’m sure it’s completely different now..”

“It’s like Pitchcliff, but warmer. Dryer than here. It’s nice.”

“‘Nice’?”

“Same amount of Stormbirds, though.” This, with derision.

He laughs, because he has to. Some nights, he still finds her in the snow, and wakes up in a cold sweat. “Once this is all over, maybe I’ll swing over there. I mean, to Free Heap. For the weather, not the Stormbirds.”

“It was nice,” she repeats, and then hesitantly adds, “It reminded me of you.”

His heart is suddenly a moth, sooty and trembling. “What,” he says lightly, “the yelling drunks?”

“I’d just come from the Sacred Lands.” She frowns, and he can see her swallow hard against things she doesn’t know how to say. “Free Heap was...better.”

A thousand smartass remarks flood into his mouth, but he grinds them between his teeth. “I’m sorry it went badly with the Nora,” he makes himself say, even though he’s not sorry at all. He’s angry, angry for her and angry at the self-righteous blue-painted bungs camped on the other side of the butte. _You don’t belong here_ , he’d told her that first day, and she didn’t. Not when they’ve got their heads so far up their asses they can’t see her blinding brilliance. “Honestly, I’m surprised to see them here.”

“I told them to come.”

“And they just...packed up and went?” He wouldn’t have guessed they would, but it’s _Aloy._

Aloy, who is an impossible blaze. Aloy, who is sitting beside him on the balustrade, hands tucked between her knees like a fearful child.

He is _so_ angry. He wonders how many Nora he could take out before Aloy killed him for trying. He thinks he could get at least three or four.  

“Anointed.” She spits the word out like a curse. “After being so careful to never actually _acknowledge that I exist_ , suddenly I’m _anointed_.”

“Anointed,” he repeats. “So they said. It’s a little dramatic, even for them.”

His attempt at levity falls flat. “I was Outcast,” she says dully. “When I went into the mountain, I was Cursed, and I came back out, I’m Anointed. They were all trying to _touch_ me-”

Anyone else might miss the barely-suppressed shudder of revulsion, but Erend - Erend knows how to take a hit.

He knows what it’s like to expect the hit. He knows the terrifying lurch when the expected hit doesn’t come. He knows the paranoia of kindness, the suspicion and guilt that too often manifest as anger. He _knows_.

“Want me to go kick them?” he offers. “I’m brute force. I’ll just saunter over, flex my muscles. Be big and scary.”

She gives him something very nearly approaching a watery smile.

Fire and _spit_ , they don’t deserve her.

He wants to touch her. He wants to touch her more than he’s ever wanted a drink. He wants to draw her in, to reach over and sink his fingers into the dense blaze of her hair. He wants her to feel the steadying weight of his palm on the back of her head.

Erend is good at being hit. He’s still coming to terms with that, but he knows what he is. He knows where he comes from. He’s only just now realizing that Aloy is good at being hit too, except she never had Ersa to make sure she understands it's not her fault.

He still doesn’t know who was killed during her Proving. He doesn’t want to admit how much time he’s spent thinking about it. Aloy helped him find Ersa - maybe she’d lost a sibling? She doesn’t hesitate offering a hand to clasp in an agreement, a hand to help him to his feet when he’s knocked on his ass, but otherwise, she doesn’t touch anyone. He hadn’t realized it until he’d watched her with the Nora. She’d pulled up stiffly after the barest pleasantries had been exchanged.

“Look,” he says. “Go to my place tonight. Don’t hang out up here.”

“Marad gave me the key to Olin’s house,” she admits.

He whistles. “Now _that’s_ a nice place. Not a bad deal.” He nudges her foot. “And you know basement’s open.”

He hears her huff in amusement.

They’re quiet a moment. The Carja banners snap as the wind picks up, signalling more impending rain.  “I’m serious,” he finally says. “Don’t stay here. Tell the Nora whatever you have to. Tell them you need to consult with Avad, or check on the garrison, or take a real bath.”

She makes an irritated noise.

“I’m kidding about the bath. You smell amazing. Really.” She smells...wild, uncivilized, and his body is ringing like an anvil.

Aloy frowns. “Where are you going to be?”

“Here,” he says immediately. “The Vanguard’s here to protect the Spire. We’re not going anywhere.”

She chews around a question. “...you’re really not drinking anymore?”

Her skepticism is well-deserved, and from anyone else, he’d feel a bit of righteous indignation, but it’s her, so... “Hammer to steel.” He shakes his head. “Not gonna say it hasn’t been a hell of a road, but...I’ve got help.” He glances at his men. They’re assembled out of earshot, but just barely, and they’re _definitely_ not sneaking glances in his direction.

Those bastards. No sense of privacy.

“I, um.” Erend swallows hard. “I didn’t realize how much I could lose. How much I _was_ losing. I thought I didn’t have anything, and…well, you know.”

“...turns out you do?”

“Yeah,” he says, and he’s looking right at her, as bold as he’s ever been. “Turns out I do.”

 _It’s you_ , he wants to say. _My life, my home - Avad could have cast me out, and I think I’d have taken it, but you always come back to Meridian, and I couldn’t stand to miss you_.

“Good,” she says quietly. “That’s good. I’ve been worried, Erend, and it’s really, really good to see you.”

Fire and spit. He’s trying to tease her apart, to feed her flame into its usual blazing glory, but everything is as damp as the weather, and she’s a guttering flicker. “Look,” he says, “I don’t know what we’re up against. I don’t need to know. I just know that I’ve got your back, no matter what. I’ll be right behind you, unless you tell me you need me somewhere else, and then by the forge, I’ll hold my ground.” He thumps his chest. “Brute force.”

“I can’t ask you to do that-”

“You’re not asking,” he says firmly. “I’m _doing_. I couldn’t follow you to Sunfall, and I couldn’t follow you to any of the other crazy places you’ve been, but this is my home turf. This is my city.” He bangs a fist against the stone. “This right here? This is _mine_ , and you can’t tell me it isn’t.”

Aloy doesn’t cry. He only knows that because he’s watching her right now, and her steel is very, very close to splintering under months of exhaustion and fear, and she’s still standing firm. “Ersa always said to let the hammer do the work, not the arm,” he says gently. “You’re not alone in this. You’ve got so many people here to back you up. We’re here for you,” he repeats. “And we’re here because we want to be.”

“I don’t deserve that,” she mumbles.

Fire and steel, she guts him every time. “Listen to you,” he makes himself say. “Taming machines and tracking killers all before breakfast, and she thinks she doesn’t deserve a little boost now and then.”

Somehow, she manages a damp chuckle.

Erend should say _I love you_. He should tell her she’s the most important person he’s ever met, and that from the very first moment, she’s set him on fire in a way he could never have imagined possible. Aloy burns more brightly than the sun, and he’s a hapless moth, dazed and entranced and absolutely yearning to lose himself in the wild blaze of her hair.

The evening’s growing thick and dark, stars slowly being buried in heavy clouds. The entire world is hanging on the eve of a battle that may very well determine the future’s very existence. Erend can’t tell her he loves her, because the one thing he can’t stand to lose is the one thing that’s not for him to claim. Instead, her boots are bare inches from his leg, and he lets himself drop a hand to her ankle, awkwardly patting it before pulling away.

“What was _that_?” she asks, her voice rich with a consternation that is the closest thing to her usual self he’s heard all evening.

“Pep talk,” he offers.

She actually _laughs_ , and fire and spit, he thinks they may survive after all.


	18. Chapter 18

The inevitable downpour starts again, and they retreat to cover, taking shelter under a crumbling stone portico. 

“Go back to Meridian,” Erend says, because Aloy looks like she’s about to fall asleep standing up, and he can feel the Nora watching her. They stare like Grazers, alert and covetous, and he feigns avoiding a drip to put himself between them and their Anointed. “Stay at Olin’s, stay at my place, stay wherever. Just...don’t stay here.” It’s something he’d never thought he’d say, not after missing her so fiercely. He wants her to be here, wants to bask in her light like a Snapjaw in the sun, but he can’t stand the weight of the Noras’ creepy need boiling off them like metalburn. “Olin’s place probably smells better.”

Aloy doesn’t even blink. “The Spire,” she says doubtfully. 

“Whatever’s coming, it has to go through us first,” Erend tells her, “and Meridian is between us and them.”

“HADES will come for the Spire,” she says, and if he doesn’t recognize the name, he doesn’t have to. The Spire is an artifact of the Ancients, an inert column, but her fierce concern tells him everything he needs to know: the demon machine, the metal devil - it’s coming here, and the Spire is its ultimate goal. He doesn’t need to know why. He just needs to hold the line, and by the forge, he will. 

“You need to stop it, right? And it’s got to come through Meridian. Won’t you have more time if you’re already there?” It’s the best he’s got, and he doesn’t believe for one second that it’s going to work.

Except, it does. She nods tiredly, and scrubs a hand at her face. “You’re right.”

“I’m right?” He makes himself chuckle. “I should get you to write that down. Commemorate the occasion. Maybe we’ll celebrate it every year.”

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she says, and it comes out so plaintive that he almost can’t breathe. “I mean, I wish it weren’t here. But, you know.”

“Now I  _ know _ you’re tired,” he says. “Go, before you fall over.”

She’s almost to the edge of the courtyard, when Charming Oaf muscles back in control. “Aloy,” Erend calls after her. “When this is all over, I'm gonna ask for those two minutes.”

She actually stops and turns around. “Make sure you're still standing when this is over, and they’re yours.”

Fire and spit. He’s not grinning. He’s  _ not _ . 

He leans casually on his axe as she retreats into the darkness, and if he glances in the general direction of the Nora, well, that’s just because he’s the captain of the Vanguard, checking his allies’ position. 

If any of them try to follow her, he  _ will _ kill them. 

 

****

 

He’s surrounded on all sides. There’s a battle in front of him that he can’t predict. There’s Aloy, tantalizingly close, but tucked away on the other side of the valley. There’s his men staring at him with tragic distress- “Captain, you _ still forgot to kiss her- _ ” and then abruptly, there’s one of the Nora braves, materializing into the torchlight like a Stalker. 

“You’re Oseram,” the scar-faced brave says, which seems to be the standard Nora greeting.

“Guilty as charged,” Erend says. “Erend, Captain of the Sun King’s Vanguard.”

“Varl,” the brave says. “Sona is my mother.”

“I can see the family resemblence,” Erend offers. The scowl is  _ definitely _ the same. 

“Aloy,” Varl says without preamble. “What is she to you?”

Fire and spit. The accusation in the brave’s question is more than Erend can handle, but he very carefully breathes through his nose and doesn’t throw a punch. 

If he were drunk, this conversation would be over before it began, and they’d both end up dead, right after starting a brutal civil war right here on the top of this butte. 

“The Sun King told me to defend the Spire,” he makes himself say, “so here I am.”

“Answer the question.”

“I’m here for her,” he says, because that’s as far as he’s willing to go with a spear lingering at Varl’s hand. “Same as you.”

“I see you watching her.”

Fire and spit, the whole damn world is watching him watch her. “So are you.”

“She’s the Anointed.”

“I know.” He almost says  _ and she fucking hates it _ , but again, the spear, and Varl’s scowling in a decidedly unfriendly way. 

“Where will you be when the metal devil comes?” the brave demands. “Will you stay, or will you run?”

“If I run,” Erend says carefully, “it’s because I’m running straight at the damn thing.”

Abruptly, Varl’s lips curl into something approaching a smile. “Good,” he says. “That makes two of us.”

Fire and spit, that almost makes him  _ like _ this kid. “Look,” Erend says. “Your people came a long way for this fight, and by the forge, you make it obvious you didn’t want to. I...I was there at the Proving. I was with the Carja delegation, and by the forge, that was something I never wanted to see.”

Raw anger flashes across Varl’s face, but Erend holds up a hand. “Hear me out - just...please. Hear me out. I don’t know if she told you, but the same guys who hit the Proving are the ones who released these machines into the world. Even if it weren’t for her - even if Aloy wasn’t here, even if I didn’t know her at all - I’d want those bastards dead.” He swallows. “The thing of it is, I  _ do _ know her, and I know what she’s capable of. You’re here because you think she’s some kind of mystical hero-”

“The Goddess  _ spoke _ to her,” Varl snaps.

“Look, I don’t know,” Erend says. “I wasn’t there. I’m not saying it didn’t happen. All I’m saying is that...fire and spit, she’s done things I didn’t think were even  _ possible _ .” She’d looked at bare dirt and seen that Ersa wasn’t dead. He’d knocked the belly plate off a Sawtooth for her perfect kill, and felt competent for the first time in his life. She’d said straight to his face that he was better than he was, and he’d  _ believed  _ it. 

She’s heat and light he thought he’d never see. Of all the things he never expected, she is at the very top of the list, and she keeps  _ being _ at the top of the list. He’d been resigned to being a useless drunk forever, but somehow he clawed his way to sobriety, and he’s  _ still clawing _ . 

He is so utterly, stupidly in love, and he’d never thought  _ that _ was possible. 

“Maybe she’s sent by your goddess,” Erend says. “I don’t know, and I don’t  _ care _ . All I know is that I’m gonna do anything -  absolutely  _ anything  _ \- to get her where she needs to go, to help her with what she needs to do.”

Varl is silent a moment. “I misjudged you,” he finally says. “I think you and I understand each other very well.” He offers out a hand. 

It’s not what Erend wants to do, not when the rest of the Nora are still glowing with hostility across the butte. Not when they took possession of her only after they decided she’d been touched by their stupid goddess. She isn’t something to be claimed, and the anger burns in his throat. 

In the end, the Nora are here to fight the same battle. The Oseram and rebel Carja hadn’t liked each other during the Liberation, either, but without their alliance, the Red Raids would never have stopped. 

Aloy’s like Ersa, he thinks. She has the same innate power to bring these disparate parties together to go up against a larger foe, and fire and spit, he is humbled by her brilliance. 

Erend clasps Varl’s hand. “Here’s to victory,” he says. 

“Victory,” Varl agrees. 

 

****

 

The runner comes just after dawn. “Spotters at Evening’s Sign,” she gasps. “Machines. So many machines.”

There’s fire on the western ridge, the smoke heavy and dark. Erend knows that smoke. He saw it during the Liberation.

It’s blaze. It consumes the jungle, a wild rush of ravenous flame. It’s burning the path for an invading army. 

The explosion is bigger than anything he’s ever seen. It topples the entire ridge as if it were a child’s toy. The sound hits with a physical force, knocking the breath from his chest and shaking the entire valley. There’s a long silence when nothing moves, and then all the birds erupt out of the trees at once, a thick black cloud of feathery panic. 

He doesn’t know what he’s expected, not after everything Aloy’s told him. He only knows that what coalesces out of the choking dust isn’t the Eclipse. It’s machines, more machines than he’s ever seen at once, and every single one of them is Corrupted. Even from this height, he can see the metalburn swirling around them, the savage purpose of their ground-shaking stride. 

Erend should feel afraid, but he doesn’t. This is what he’s been waiting for. This is what he’s trained for. This is who he  _ is _ , brute force and solid muscle. He’s Ersa’s little brother, the Captain of the Vanguard, and by the forge, he will hold his ground.

“WHAT DO WE DO?” he roars to his men.

They stand with their shoulders back and cannons ready. “HIT IT LIKE A HAMMER UNTIL IT CAN’T HIT BACK!”

 

****

 

At first, it doesn’t seem too bad. It’s a hard fight, but after the agonizing wait, he’s primed and almost  _ eager _ for violence. He hears the cannons down below, and he thinks,  _ we’ve totally got this _ . 

Then the thing with the rockets crashes into view, and he suddenly knows he’s very, very wrong.

 

****

 

It’s worse than he thinks it’s going to be.

It may actually be the end of the world.

 

****

 

He almost doesn’t see it. He’s dealing with a double handful of Corrupted Glinthawks, and Adar is down. Half the Vanguard is down. He can hear the Nora War-Chief bellowing to her fighters, but he can’t see them through the smoke. 

Ice crusts the front of his gambeson, and every movement sends it shattering away like glass. He hears the first explosion, and - well, he’s a soldier. He’s the captain. If there’s another threat, he needs to see where it’s coming from, and in between Glinthawks, he glances over the railing. 

It’s a long, long way down, but there’s only one person whose armor shimmers like that. He sees the second missile, sees the cliffs around the Meridian gate shear off in huge, crumbling chunks. 

He doesn’t even have time to scream her name.

 

****

 

There’s nothing left. 

There’s nothing left. 

There’s nothing, but she told him to hold. 

Everything’s breaking apart around him. The world is shattering and he’s frozen and burning and convulsing with shock. 

But he holds. 

Fire and spit, he holds. 


	19. Chapter 19

The sky goes red.

He can’t tell if this is the precipice of the end, or if he’s just on the precipice himself.

He’s not sure if it matters.

He’s moving like the machines he fights. He’s somewhere in the back of his mind, cutting and hacking and kicking at the endless onslaught. He knows the point where muscle fails, and he’s so far beyond that. If he comes back into his body, he will actually die, and so he just - doesn’t. He breathes and he moves and he kills. He’s nothing else.

He’s vaguely aware of a blur of blue and brown nearby: Varl. Well. They’d understood each other better than they’d thought. Victory isn’t going to come, but they’re still fighting for Aloy.

That’s the only victory that matters.

 

****

 

There’s a scrabble of rock on the path behind him, and it’s machines, it _has_ to be. He’d sent Tandin and the others back down to defend the base of the butte, but he’s sure they’re dead too, because not a heartbeat later, the entire world shook with rocketfire. The path was gone, and the butte is crumbling from all sides. The stone balustrades and columns, the old porticos and tile roofs - all shaken and shattered down to rubble. Only the Spire still stands, a bleak and looming testament to the fate of the Ancients.

All Erend knows is now. Right now, there’s no Elisabet Sobek, no superweapon to save them. Right now, there’s no way down. There’s no way forward, and no way back. Something is coming up what’s left of the path, and fire and spit, he hopes it’s not one of the leggy ones, the ones with the crushing, whiplike tail-

It’s not a machine, or it _is_ , but he’s so close to dying his brain has given up: it’s _Aloy_. He’s seeing Aloy.

Of course he is.

If this is the end, at least it’s a good one.

She stumbles forward and he puts up his arms, and then they’re clinging to each other, his face in her hair and her head buried in his shoulder. “You’re alive,” she croaks. “You’re _alive_.”

She smells like sweat and blood and smoke and all the wildness of the world converging-

She’s here and he’s _in the fierce grip of her arms_ , and he’s utterly sure he’s dead. He’s died and she’s there. He doesn’t deserve this, but she’s here, she’s _here_ -

“We thought you’d fallen with the ridge,” says Varl, and: if he’s dead, why the hell is Varl here, and-

Which means-

Aloy is _alive_. They’re _both_ alive.

She’s alive, she’s alive, she’s _alive_. He thrusts her back to dumbly stare. There’s blood on her face and blood in her hair and blood down the front of her armor-

If he opens his mouth, he’s going to throw up.

“It’s already started. It’s-” She tugs at his sleeve, already lurching upward. “I have to get to HADES.”

His throat is swollen shut, but he forces the words out anyway. “We were just about to go over the top.”

“Can’t ask you-”

“ _Dammit_ , Aloy!” He shoves her toward the stairs. “...got your _back_.”

She’s barely upright, and trips over the first two steps. “Erend…”

“Do it,” he chokes out. “I’m right behind you.” They’re alive. He’s alive and _she’s_ alive, and right now, it’s not over yet.

Loving her means letting her go, but by the forge, he’ll die before he lets her go alone.

 

****

 

He’d thought the fighting was bad before.

Nothing compares to this.

Erend, Varl, Talanah - somehow they’re all here. They’re a protective phalanx around Aloy, and they _have_ to make it. It’s not his second wind. It’s not even his _third_ wind. He’s so lost in the battle haze that he’s just following the bright flag of her hair. He doesn’t know where his arms end and his axe begins. He doesn’t know where his legs are. He’s a moth, a loose collection of fragile dust in an endless, howling storm.

A wild swing brings him close enough to see the copper green of her eyes, and she’s _alive_. She’s alive, and so is he. Her freckles are hidden beneath soot and blood, but she’s _here_.

“Two minutes,” he manages. “When this is over-”

“I know,” she says, and uses his shoulder as a launchpad to vault onto one of the stone columns.

Fire and spit, he’s bleeding from a dozen places, his armor’s barely intact, and there’s a Corrupted Sawtooth roaring down on him, but she’s alive, and he desperately, desperately loves her.

 

****

 

There’s a lull in the battle, hardly more than a sharp intake of breath. He should be digging himself in, but instead, he's watching her struggling to check the tension of her bowstring. The string stretches across her cheek as she draws it back with shaking arms, the curve of the wood an echo of the curve of her back.

He loves her. He always has. He thinks back to the moment in Brightmarket, of standing there tranced by the bright cloud of her hair. The Carja are eager in their embrace of the sun's yellow heat. They obsess about noon, the moment all shadows are gone.

Aloy is nothing like that. Aloy is the first flash at dawn, the ruddy promise of a new day. Aloy is the last heat of the evening, the bloody clouds tucking the sun beneath the horizon. She's a roaring brazier at the watchtower. She's a crackling hearth on a winter night. She's the forthright shudder of a candle, the ardent brightness of an oil lamp.

She’s light and heat. She's the killing shot after he knocks the belly plate off a Sawtooth, and she's the firm hand in his hair when he's losing himself in grief.

He’s never going to say _I love you_. He didn’t know it until now, but it doesn’t matter. He's brute force. He's solid muscle. It's what he's good at, and he's _very_ good. Aloy needs the best of everyone, and he will give her everything he can, and then the last measure after.

This is the battle against the end of the world, and he has no idea if they’re winning. He doesn’t think they are. Bodies are strewn on the ground around him, but Aloy is here. Once, he might have been more than raw power, but none of that matters anymore; raw power is all he’s got left, and by the forge, he’ll get her where she needs to go. Enough of his men are dead that he has no illusions how this is going to be, but as long as Aloy makes it, it’ll all be okay.

This is what it means to stand with her. This is what he’s meant to do.

Talanah is crouched behind some rubble nearby, counting the last few arrows in her quiver, but she stops short when she sees his face. “Now?” she demands. “You’re just figuring it out _now?_ ”

He’s too startled to even begin to form a suitable retort.

“Dense,” she calls over, and she’s almost _laughing_. “You can bicker with dawn, but dawn always wins.”

Oh yeah, he thinks, savoring the glow of copper-bright hair. Dawn _always_ wins.

Then the next wave hits, and he can’t think at all.

 

****

 

He knows it’s not a devil. He knows it’s a machine like any of the others, but it roars like a tornado and the words it speaks knock the air from his lungs. He knows it’s a machine, but he’s a petrified animal in the face of unspeakable power.

“PRIORITIZE ENTITY,” roars the thing, and that means _Aloy_ , and this is _worse_ than the end of the world.

They’re all going to die. He’s absolutely certain that this is how he goes. He’s accepted it, and moved on. The only thing that matters is that Aloy survives. It’s his purpose to ensure that, and he’s suddenly terrified that he’s going to fail.

Then she miscalculates a dodge, and the force of the blow sends her tumbling off the stone like a broken doll.

He doesn't even have time to think _don't be dead_.

He can hear the whining thunk of the machine as it reloads. One of his legs isn't really working. Neither of his legs are working, but he somehow gets to her side and drags them both to cover.

With the guns on that thing, it's not gonna be cover for very long.

She's barely conscious, and he almost can’t breathe. “Look at me. Aloy. Please. _Please_.”

“Have to go,” she mumbles.

He desperately wipes the blood and stray hair from her face. “Tell me what to do,” he chokes out. “Tell me where. I can-”

“Has to be me.”

He's going to lose her. He can feel it in his bones. It's okay if he dies, because that's the only way for this to end. But Aloy, _Aloy_... She can't. She _can’t_. That's not how this is supposed to go, that’s not how this is supposed to _be_ -

None of this is how it's supposed to be. He’s not supposed to be sprawled behind crumbled rock with her half-dead in his arms. Of all the things he didn’t expect, he didn’t expect this, because this is the nightmare. This is the scene that’s played behind his eyes for _months_ , the bleeding and the screaming and the dying, but it wasn’t real. That was the comfort: it wasn’t real. Except right now, it _is_ , and it _can’t be_ -

He has nowhere to go. He can’t wake up. He won’t ever wake up. This isn’t a dream, this is actually happening, _this is actually happening_ , and his lungs are ash in his chest.

“Has to be me,” she repeats.

“ _Why?_ ” His vision blurs, hot and hard a way that has nothing to do with the smoke. “I could do it. Aloy, please, I can do it, just tell me how-”

“She's the only one.” She blinks, trying to focus. “And it thinks I'm her.”

Elisabet Sobek.

“You're _not_ her,” he says fiercely, choking on the words. “You're _you_. You're Aloy, you're-”

Her eyes are red and flooding, a hand fisted hard at what's left of his collar. “You're the _only_ one who thinks so.”

He almost says it then, with his hands on her face and her body tucked between his and certain death - _I love you, I love_ you _, the you that’s here,_ _the you that’s light and heat and life, the one that brought me back -_ but it’s all stuck in his throat. He’s crying, huge, thick gulps of air that doesn’t exist - there are tears streaming down both their faces, and-

The machine is done reloading. The wall behind them explodes, and there’s too much rock and too much fire. He pushes her away - _I love you_ \- and throws himself back into the fray.

 

****

 

The sky is red and pulsing, and this machine is never going to die. It’s huge and endless and Erend can barely lift his axe. He’s given up diving away from the rockets. He’s beneath the thing, swaying on his feet and weakly hacking at its metal ankles. Varl is somewhere across what’s left of the courtyard, his arrows pinging uselessly off the thing’s carapace as he draws its fire. Talanah is a damp heap in the rubble to Erend’s left, and Aloy - Aloy’s somehow still moving.  

It’s killing them, it’s killing them all, and then suddenly, with a huge, grinding groan, it starts to collapse, and he barely staggers away in time.

There’s a long, hard second where no one breathes. It’s reloading, it’s cycling, it’s-

It’s down. Impossibly, it’s down.

“Go!” He waves an arm at Aloy, too exhausted to shout. “Aloy! Go _now_!”

She stares at him with huge eyes, and then she _runs_.

The last thing he sees is the hard arc of her spear and the huge ball of blue electricity, and all he can think is _maybe this is it._

 _Maybe she’s actually won_.

 

****

 

In the end, he doesn’t tell her he loves her. He’s gotten her where she needs to go.

It’s all that’s all that’s ever mattered, and in the end, it means exactly the same thing.


	20. Chapter 20

The red in the sky pulls back like a lifted blanket, and Erend doesn’t die.

No one is more surprised than he is.

 

****

 

Aloy staggers out of the blue haze. He sees her lurch off the battlefield and into the jungle at the edge of the butte, and even though he's well past falling over, he hauls his broken corpse up to go after her.

She’s still in shock, spikes of electricity arcing across her skin. She doesn’t hear him coming, and before he can say her name, she’s got her bow up and shakily aimed.

“It’s me,” he croaks, his hands reflexively raised. “Aloy. It’s all right. It’s just me.”

She doesn’t say anything, but the bow sinks to her side. She sways in place, and he stumbles forward to put a steadying hand on her shoulder. “It’s done,” he manages, because she’s looking at him like she doesn’t recognize what’s happened, and he doesn’t _know,_ but the Spire is glowing the same calming blue as her pacified machines, so- “It’s over. It’s done.”

She stares blankly.

“It’s done,” he repeats, ready to catch her if she falls - even though they’d both drop like stones - but then something like a sunrise slowly erupts across her face, daybreak after an endless, terrifying night.

They stand on the cliff. He doesn’t remember how to breathe, every muscle in his body gone pulped and numb, but when she raises her bow, a huge cheer erupts from the battered crowd below, and _oh_ , that’s a shiver down his spine.

She is beautiful and resplendent, and she is a conquering goddess who’s stepped out of the stories of old. She’s saved them all, and she’s blessed the world with her presence.

Steel to his bones, he’d never expected to see this, and it’s so much more than he’s ever deserved.

The world might love Aloy, Anointed machine-killer, but Erend...Erend loves this woman right here, the one drooling blood and maddenly stubborn. She turns to look at him, and all he can do is nod.

 

****

 

The butte is shattered and burning. The stone stairways are completely collapsed. There’s no way to go down, and no way for anyone else to get up.

It’s okay. It’s all okay.

Erend knows the moment muscle fails. The legs he can’t feel stop bearing his weight, and if he lands slumped against a ruined column like a rat-eaten sack of grain instead of face-down into the mud - well, that’s sheer luck.

The boiling red sky is back to blue. As he leans back against the stone, it’s so clear and deep he feels like he’s falling straight up. The entire world spins around him, the sun and the sky, and he’s barely anchored to the earth beneath. There’s air in his lungs and blood in his mouth, sharp and bright and heavy.

At some point, Aloy drops down next to him. She’s bleeding. They’re both bleeding. There’s so much blood it almost seems trivial. “You okay?” he asks, because he’s an idiot and he has to ask.

“We did it,” she mumbles, and there are tears carving pale trails down the blood and grime on her face.

He pulls her over into his arms, because she's shaking and he's so far gone his body heat is the only thing left he can give. She makes a small noise against his chest, and he sinks his fingers into the damp, crusted mat of her hair. She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s _alive_.

 _I love you_. But he's too fucking tired to speak.

Talanah drags herself over. Her neck and shoulder are a raw mess of metalburn, but she reaches out to put one hand on Aloy’s foot. “You didn't leave the big one for me,” she croaks.

Aloy huffs. “You just softened it up.”

Varl joins them sometime later, easing himself down to sit on Aloy’s other side. “Killed the metal devil.” He head lolls back against the stone. “Make a good story.”

All of it will make a good story.

 

****

 

When the rescue teams finally climb to the top of the butte, that's how they find them: curled around Aloy, the mud gone slick and red.

 

****

 

Someone is saying, “Hey there, Captain, let's see about that leg-” and then they're peeling Aloy away from him.

“No,” he says, or tries to, and fumbles to grab her arm. Her fingers spasm on his hand, but then a Nora is pulling her up and away. She's barely standing, and when her knees give out, he slings her arm around his shoulders and staggers away.

She doesn't belong with them. She doesn't belong with any of them, and she doesn't belong with Erend either, but she can be anywhere she wants to be and they’re not gonna let her make that choice-

He's gonna _fight_ them-

“Easy, easy,” and it's Tandin taking his hands, Tandin taking his weight as they lift him to his feet.

“Aloy,” Erend says, because it’s the only sound in his mouth.

“She’s okay,” Adar says, and _no_ , of course she is, but they’re taking her-

There’s not a lot he remembers after that.

 

****

 

There’s _really_ not a lot he remembers.

He hurts. He hurts more than he’s ever hurt in his life, and there isn’t one single muscle that isn’t clenched and screaming. It’s worse than any detox. It’s worse than Dervahl’s sound machine. He can’t even _quantify_ how much worse.

He becomes a doll, an inanimate straw dummy of pain and more pain. He’s not sure where he is, but they’re forcing water down his throat and then sitting him up to pee. “Got to keep drinking,” someone says.

Even swallowing takes titantic effort.

During one of the moments he’s more or less upright, he glances down in the bucket and it looks like dark tea. “Have to keep drinking,” insists whoever’s taking care of him. “Lots of clean water. We’ll get you cleaned up.”

He’s been hit in the kidneys before; it’s hardly a novelty. He concentrates on swallowing and not puking.

He considers that it may involve less effort to actually die.  

He has no idea how long it takes, but they’re pouring more water into him when he notices a cloying bitterness: good, he thinks. Finally something heavy.

He waits patiently for the sedative to kick in, and then, thank the forge, he actually _sleeps_.

 

****

 

In the end, they’re alive. Talanah is drenched in antidote, swathed in seeping bandages and barely conscious under the weight of hintergold. Avad kneels beside her, his head level with hers, smoothing her hair back and murmuring words no one else can hear.

 _Gotcha_ , Erend thinks. For some reason it’s funny, but he hurts too much to laugh.

There’s a litany of things. Once his body stops screaming for one reason, it starts screaming for another, and he’s good at being hit, so - he goes with it. “Kidneys are still with us,” a healer says, and Erend thinks he should probably be listening. “I won’t disparage Oseram armor again; we dug out the worst of the shrapnel, but shockingly, aside from the burns on your leg and arm, you’re alive. As the sun as my witness, you shouldn’t be here.”

That almost sounds like nothing. He’s probably had worse. “Aloy,” he says, or tries to say, but his mouth isn’t working, and the healer just pats his head and feeds him more hintergold.

 

****

 

“You’re awake,” says Avad. It’s a generous assessment.

“Aloy,” Erend manages.

“With the Nora. How are you feeling?”

 _No_ , she does _not_ belong with them, and he almost accomplishes sitting upright and then _definitely_ almost passes out at the effort. “She’s fine,” Avad assures him. “She’s with her people. They’re taking care of her.”

They don’t know how to take care of her. They don’t know _her_. They’re going to take her and use her and string her up like one of their ridiculous idols-

“Please rest,” Avad says, and his voice isn’t that of Erend’s king. It’s that of the man who should have been Erend’s brother-in-law, a man who almost lost the people he loves most in this world, and still feels the chill of fear.

Erend doesn’t want to rest. He wants to get up. He wants to _find_ her. He wants to stand there and be big and threatening until they understand that she’s not their Anointed, that she’s a person who wants to choose her own way-

He can’t get up. Even blinking takes too much effort.

Fine. He’ll rest.

He doesn’t have much choice anyway.

 

****

 

“Hang in there, Cap,” Tandin says. “We’ve got everything under control. You just concentrate on what you’re doing.”

What _is_ he doing?

Erend really has no idea.

 

****

 

At some point, Erend opens his eyes, and there’s a pale, skinny Nora staring down at him. All of his worst fears come crashing in at once - this _isn’t_ a nightmare, there’s real blood on his hands, real blood in her hair and on her face, there’s no way to _fix_ this, not with the rockets behind them and the butte crumbling around them-

“It’s okay, it’s okay!” the Nora says quickly, holding up his hands. “I’m Teb. I’m a friend. It’s okay.”

“Aloy,” Erend growls, but it’s not a growl, it’s a desperate, terrified croak. If she’s _gone_ -

“She’s fine! She’s fine, I promise.” The Nora takes two steps back. “I just came to- she’s been asking, and I promised her I’d come by.”

His heart isn’t beating. He’s not sure he can breathe. “She’s alive.”

Teb nods too many times. “ _Yes_ , and she wanted me to make sure-”

“She’s alive.” His brain is sparking like a downed Watcher. “Where?”

“In our camp,” Teb says, and looks him over. “Hintergold or ember? Or both?”

“ _Aloy_ ,” Erend insists.

“Hintergold.” Teb nods to himself, and frowns. “Aloy’s okay,” he says slowly. “Do you understand that? She’s okay.”

She’s okay. It almost makes sense, but it doesn’t seen _right_ , not when his hands are slick with her blood- “Where?”

“She’s with us. We’re taking care of her, just like you’re being taken care of here.”

Erend needs to _see_ her. He needs-

His needs to go _find_ her, to get her out of there, to get her _away_ from them, but the world spins like he’s had an entire barrel of the strongest brew before he’s even out of bed.

“We’re taking care of her,” Teb repeats. “She wanted me to tell you that. She wanted me to check on you.

Her name is still in his mouth, but his lungs aren’t responding.

He needs-

He _needs-_

 

****

 

He doesn’t really know how long he’s out, but by the time he’s something approaching conscious, based on hair, it’s been awhile. “Need to shave,” he says ruefully, running his hands through the new growth.

Tandin’s sitting in a nearby chair. “Could be a new style,” he offers.

Erend raises an eyebrow. “Look me in the face and tell me it doesn’t look terrible.”

The Vanguardsman squints. “It’s...it’s got a certain...”

“You can’t even lie.”

Tandin grins. “Nope. Don’t worry, Cap. Word is that you’ll be back on your feet soon.”

 _Soon_ is a nebulous term. He’s so shaky and weak that he’s still pissing in the bucket by the bed. As near as he can tell, he’s in a makeshift clinic somewhere in Meridian, sharing a room with about ten others, all set up in cots. He’d thought Talanah was in here somewhere, but the rest of the patients seem to be Oseram, so his guess is that she was moved, or he was.

“Aloy,” he says.

Tandin gives him an exasperated look. “Your tender devotion is endearing, Cap, it really is, but I’m gonna tell you the same thing I’ve told you every ten minutes for the last week: she’s with the Nora.”

“Adar,” he tries.

“Less tender,” Tandin says. “Busted leg, busted collarbone. Limping around doing _your_ job.”

“I’m _getting_ there,” Erend grumbles.

Something changes in Tandin’s face. “Take your time, okay? Not that we were scared or anything. Because we weren’t.”

Oh yeah. Not scared at all. “It was that bad?”

“Wasn’t good,” Tandin says, and then admits, “Looked like meat when they brought you down.”

Erend thinks of the pulped skull they’d all thought was Ersa. “Sorry,” he says quietly. “It just...had to be done.”

“Not saying it didn’t. Just saying it didn’t _look_ good.” The Vanguardsman perks up, obviously trying to change the tone. “You don’t have to drink, Cap, but you’ve _gotta_ tell the story. The others are going crazy to hear what happened.”

“Yeah. It’ll be...something.” He doesn’t remember much. He just remembers...well, Aloy and too much blood, a nightmare that never stopped. It’s not going to be a heroic story, and he absolutely doesn’t want to talk about it.

Tandin seems to know. “Get some sleep, Cap,” he says. “It’s not gonna make you any prettier, but it’ll _help_.”

Erend needs to see Aloy. He needs something to override the cloying darkness. He needs life and light, but he can’t go two steps without falling on his face.

He wonders if she’s down in the Nora camp, or if they’re taking her back to the Embrace. He wonders if she’s in as rough shape as he is, and if she is, it’s _his_ fault. Those were his hits to take, not hers. He doesn’t want to be awake, but he doesn’t want to be asleep. He needs to assure himself that whatever he’s seeing behind his eyelids isn’t real.  

He needs to see her, to fall into the wild blaze of her hair. He’s freezing to death in Meridian’s thick heat, and all he wants is to burn.


	21. Chapter 21

He tries to sleep, but all the hintergold does is trap him in nightmares he can’t escape. He dreams of falling rocks and rockets that just keep coming. He wraps himself around Aloy as the fire rages around them, but it’s never enough. It’s never, ever enough. When he claws his way to consciousness, he’s still so sedated he can’t even puke, and he has to lay there, his pounding heart the only muscle that isn’t trapped in herbal paralysis.

That’s not true. His heart and his _eyes,_ and he has no way to choke back the tears that spill over.

He _hurts._ He doesn’t know how long it’s been. He’s sure they’ve told him, but the healers’ faces all run together. Tandin comes and talks, and Adar comes and talks, but the words slide right out of Erend’s head as soon as the Vanguardsmen leave. There might be other visitors. He’s not really sure.

There’s his arm and his shoulder and his leg, and a list of other things he doesn’t listen to. The thing they seem to be most worried about is the quantity of water he’s drinking and the color of the water he’s pissing. There’s a thin broth that he’s given on what’s probably a regular basis, and he’s too tired and in too much pain to bother puking it back up.

He’s cold. He’s in Meridian - he can tell by the room, by its yellow stone and the bold colors of the dimly-lit paper lamps - but he’s as cold as if he’s wandered away from Pitchcliff in a hard winter blizzard.

He thinks of Aloy, of her body shielded by his but _not enough_ , and the stark black shock wax bubbling out of her lips-

It didn’t happen that way. It _didn’t._

 

****

 

He thinks of Ersa. He thinks of the days she’d been laid out by Dervahl’s weapon of sound. He thinks of how _wrong_ he’d been, how stupid and useless he’d been in finding her.

“How’m I doing?” he asks the ghost that’s not there. “I know you had it way worse-”

“Who are you talking to?” Ersa says.

“Not you,” he retorts. “You’ve never actually answered. I just...am I doing what you wanted?” It’s a stupid question. If he’s asking her for reassurance, he _hasn’t_ stopped relying on her, but- “I think I’m doing it, Ersa. I’m trying. Is that how it goes? Just the endless trying?”

She doesn’t say anything.

“I want you to be proud of me,” he says quietly. “But you always were, weren’t you? You’d have left me behind if you weren’t.”

A cool hand drops onto his forehead, and fire and spit, he _knows_ it’s not his sister, but he can’t stop crying anyway.

 

****

 

Someone brings him blankets, and when that doesn’t help, heavy furs. He wants to say the cold isn’t from the air, it’s from his _bones,_  but the only word in his mouth is Aloy’s name. There’s warm tea and more herbs, and more hintergold that binds him like thick ice as Glinthawks swoop down and scream.

He wants Aloy. He wants Aloy more than he’s wanted anything in his life. He wants to know that she’s okay. He wants say something stupid that will make her laugh, because he’s desperate for distraction. He wants her heat and life, because he’s freezing. He wants her hand gripping hard in his hair, because he’s pretty sure he’s not going to make it out of this room, and he’s never been so fucking scared in his life.

 

****

 

Someone eventually says something about a fever breaking. He concurs. He’s broken in a dozen different places, and he is absolutely unsurprised that something else is broken, too.

 

****

 

Consciousness comes in fits and starts. Tandin comes and talks, and sometimes Erend recognizes him. Sometimes he even _remembers._

“Cap, you look real bad,” the Vanguardsman says. “Can you...not do that?”

His men aren’t even disguising their concern at this point, and Erend’s not sure what that means.

“Working on it,” he croaks.

“‘Working on it’,” Tandin echoes, and looks at Adar, standing just inside Erend’s peripheral vision. “Can you believe this guy? It’s like he’s not even trying.”

Erend’s second crosses his arms. “Is there anything you need?” he asks quietly.

“Don’t say Aloy,” Tandin says automatically, but that’s the only other word in his mouth, so Erend gives up, and falls back asleep.

 

****

 

The day he can sit up to eat his broth feels like a fucking celebration. He’s still got a tenuous grasp on reality, but at this point, he thinks it’s mostly because he’s _exhausted_.

“Look at you, Cap,” Tandin says. “In a beauty contest against a corpse, I think you’d finally be a contender.”

“You still wouldn’t put any money down,” Erend retorts, and that’s the very right thing to say, because Tandin grins and grins.

 

****

A day or two later, he has visitors.

Of all the things he doesn't expect, it’s Varl and the pale, skinny Nora called Teb.

Everything is suddenly too sharp and too cold. Erend thinks he might throw up, and her name won't even leave his mouth.

“She's fine,” Teb says quickly, and glances at Varl. “I told you. This is why it's necessary.”

Varl looks utterly unconvinced.

They keep saying that word _fine_ and Erend is starting to panic.

No, that's not true. He's been panicking for days.

“Look,” Varl says, crossing his arms with a wince. He looks _so_ much better than Erend feels, and that is completely unfair. “I'm here in this faithless city because Teb told me it was for Aloy. I don't want to be here.”

Right now, Erend doesn’t want Varl to be here either.

“We're leaving,” says Teb, “and Aloy shouldn't go with us.”

Erend’s throat swells shut.

“She _should_ ” Varl grumbles. “You weren't there, Teb. You didn't see it.” He looks at Erend almost pleading. “You saw it. You saw her stab the metal demon and release the sky from its poison. None but one chosen by the Goddess-”

“She chooses for herself,” Erend snaps, just as Teb breaks in.

“ _Look,"_  says Teb. “I'm a Stitcher, and I know when two pieces don't line up. Azu can bring me the finest hides he's ever tanned, but that doesn't mean they belong in the same garment.”

Varl glowers. Teb goes on. “Aloy doesn't fit. Maybe someday she will, but if she comes back with us now, she'll be ruined.”

“She _isn't_ cloth,” Erend growls.

“I _know_ that,” Teb assures him, and then looks expectantly at Varl.

The Nora brave heaves a sigh. “My mother is War-Chief. I’ve always thought eventually I would be asked to lead in her place, but the Goddess...it’s very clear that She hasn’t chosen me. The Goddess has chosen Aloy to take my place, and I will gladly follow her wherever she needs me to go.”

“She’s more than a War-Chief,” Erend warns. He knows she’s a leader - fire and spit, he’s seen it - but it’s not who she is. She’ll take that role if she needs to, if she’s forced into it, but it’s not how her steel is cast. She’ll break before she bends to that shape.

He’d seen her breaking. He’d sat with her on the balustrades and tried to patch her together as best he could.

“I know,” Varl says soberly. “And I know she hates to be called Anointed, but she _is_. Our tribe is so few. We’ve lost so many, and we need every Nora left. Her duty is-”

“She can help us without being _with_ us,” Teb counters. “Just like she’s already done. Teersa will understand,” he adds. “Maybe she already does. Jezza will come around. Lansra won't, but...that’s another fight.”

“If Aloy leaves, she'll be Outcast all over again,” Varl says darkly. “She'll have left the Sacred Lands-”

“We _all_ left the Sacred Lands,” Teb shoots back. “She's already a Seeker, but even if she weren’t, no one will never deny the Anointed what she wants. We all came _here_ for her.”

“You,” Varl says, suddenly spearing Erend with a fierce look. “I see you look at her. Your name was the first thing she said when she woke up. What are you to her? How have you corrupted her?”

“I’m someone who doesn’t want her to be tied down,” Erend snaps. “She's not some idol to be blessed. She's not some hero to be propped up on a throne. She _hates_ it, and she deserves some peace.”

“With you,” Varl says shrewdly, and once, Erend might have wholeheartedly agreed. Now, he’s just angry and he _hurts_ , and he’s very, very tired.

“No,” Erend says. “I mean, yeah, you’ve already got me struck; you know the carbon in my steel. I’ll go wherever she asks me to, but I won’t ask her to stay where she doesn’t want to. In the end, _it doesn’t matter_ what I want: what I _hate_ that we’re standing here even talking about this, like she’s some exotic axe to be traded.” He takes a deep breath. “Why are we talking when she’s not here? Why aren’t you talking with _her_?”

Varl doesn’t answer. Teb swallows. “She’s still really hurt,” he finally says. “Delren says she can’t be moved.”

Every muscle in Erend’s body fires at once, and by some feat of strength, he gets his legs over the edge of the bed. “We’ll go to her,” he manages, suddenly drenched in sweat and blinking back a whirling darkness. “We can-”

If he doesn’t pitch forward onto his face, it’s only because Teb is easing him back against the pillow. “You’re not much better,” the Stitcher informs him. He glances at Varl and makes a nervous, high-pitched laugh. “From what I’ve heard, there was more blood on the ground around the four of you than inside.”

“I’m upright,” Varl growls. “Someone has to be.” He’s still carrying himself gingerly, damp bandages wound around his shoulder, arm and chest. He frowns at Teb. “Are we done here?”

“No,” Teb snaps. “And you agreed to come with me.”

The brave looks around the room with barely-disguised disgust. “This city is cursed. It’s corrupt. The stones are tainted. This is why the metal devil came here, because it knew its own people-”

And then Erend _is_ launching himself up, because how _dare_ Varl-

He’s back in bed before he realizes what’s happened, and he’s been there awhile, because Teb is arguing with Varl in a corner. Erend can hear their voices, but not the specific words.

“He’s back,” Teb says, and then the Stitcher is crouching by the bed again. “You've chosen a life away from your tribe, Erend. Aloy...she has more in common with you than she does with us. She didn’t choose it for herself, but that's how she's lived, too.”

Erend doesn't say anything.

“For what it's worth, I'm glad she knows you,” Teb says. “She deserves someone who sees her for who she is.” He shakes his head. “I want to say that her place is with us, I really do. I want to say we’re her tribe...but she'll never get that from us.” He shoots Varl a pointed glance. “It’s a hard thing to say, but we all know it.”

“The Goddess chose her,” Varl says, and then grudgingly adds, “but maybe the Goddess also knows we’re not worthy.” He frowns. “I want us to be worthy, but I’m not blind. I want her to stay with us, for the Goddess to to speak through her and guide us as the She directs, and, selfishly, I...I don’t want the last time I see her. She’ll never _not_ be Anointed, no matter what she says, and I...I’m not convinced I can’t worship her.”

This is a potential rival conceding defeat before the rivalry was even realized.

“That Anointed shit - that’s not welcome at all,” Erend says before he can stop himself, and then braces himself for a solid punch.

The response is not what he expects. “I know,” Varl says soberly. “And she made that point very clear. The people who didn’t listen to her before aren’t listening to her now, and that’s...Teb’s right. I don’t want him to be right, but he is. ”

“I hope she finds a place outside the Embrace,” Teb says. “I hope there’s someplace where she can just... _be._ ”

 _Here,_  Erend wants to scream, but he can’t. Meridian isn’t going to treat her any differently, at least not in the next few months. Unlike the Nora, Avad can shield her from the worst of it, and - assuming he’s going to stand on his own ever again - Erend will knock down every single rusting pedestal anyone tries to build up beneath her. But if she goes elsewhere-

Loving her means letting her go, and letting her go might mean not protecting her, and that - that’s going to be the worst.

“We shouldn’t be here,” Varl says bitterly. “She’s the only reason we are, and I can’t decide if that’s a miracle or sheer stupidity.”

“When do you leave?” Erend asks.

“We have injured,” says Teb. “It’s impossible to say. When they can safely move, so will we. There are too many machines between here and home to travel slowly.”

“The machines?” He’s...well, he hasn’t thought about it. Aloy said the Derangement was a side-effect of the end of the world, and if the world didn’t end, the Derangement should be fixed, too. Shouldn’t it?

“We haven’t seen any Corrupted machines,” Varl says. “But everything else still wants to take a bite.”

A thousand questions flash through Erend’s mind, but he knows that even if he asks, the answers will fall straight out of his head. “Vanguard or Carja - you’ll have an escort if you want it,” he says. It’s a promise that’s not entirely his to make, but he can’t imagine Avad not agreeing.

Varl frowns, but considers. “We find ourselves allied with people we didn’t expect,” he says, and the words come out of his mouth like he’s eaten something sour. “I’ll bring the offer to my mother.”

Erend hurts, and his entire body is screaming to go find Aloy and get her _out_  and he _hates_ that he can barely sit up. “I owe you,” he makes himself say. “You fought when you didn’t want to. I respect you for that. Plenty of people wouldn’t have come at all.”

“If she stays here…” Varl shakes his head, and sets his jaw. “I saw how you fought for her on the ridge. If she chooses - if she _chooses_ -” the words almost choke him, “I trust you’ll have her back.”

The _or else_ hangs in the air, a tangible threat that Erend resents but understands.

“We’ll tell her you’re alive,” Teb says, breaking the tension. “The last time we came, it wasn’t so certain.”

“Tell her she still owes me two minutes,” Erend says, and very nearly regrets it because Varl’s face constricts in disapproval.

“Two minutes,” repeats Teb blithely. “We can do that.”

When he’s alone, Erend leans back against his pillows and lets his hands ball into fists. Teb clearly has good intentions, and Erend almost believes that Teb will keep Varl in line. Erend _doesn’t_ trust the Nora not to outright refuse, and if Aloy’s not strong enough to form a protest...

He’ll go get her. Even if it takes weeks for him to regain his strength, as soon as he can get out of bed, as soon as he can _walk_ , he’ll drag himself to the Embrace and be big and scary until she declares what she wants. After that, he'll follow her wherever she wants to go just to make sure she gets there, and then if she wants him to leave, he will. 

At this point, it’s not about love, or it's about love and the fact loving her means letting her go. He loves her, he loves her more than _anything_ , but the Nora would keep her prisoner in the guise of their religion. It would be no different than the Shadow Carja and little Itamen.

After their conversations on the balustrade, Erend is very, very afraid that Aloy is so tired, she’ll just hold out her wrists and accept the chains.


	22. Chapter 22

“We’re leaving tomorrow,” Teb says, appearing sometime near dusk. Erend is sitting up, slowly making his way through a bowl of soup. “There’s going to some sort of formalities on the bridge," the Nora goes on. "The Sun King is going to ask Aloy to stay as an advisor on the machine threat and as an ambassador from the Nora. Sona can’t protest that. Of course you should be there, but you can’t- I’m not saying you can’t speak with her, but there’s enough talk already.”

He can imagine, and his chest aches. “Whatever she needs,” he hears himself say.

“It’s, um, none of my business,” Teb says tentatively. “But...you and her?”

Erend thinks of everything he could say. _I love her_ , he could say. _She’s light and heat and life. She was the perfect shot when I knocked the belly plate off a Sawtooth. She sees things no one else can. She told me I was better than I was, and she was right._

She’s the hard clench of a hand in his hair when he’s drowning in himself. She’s confidence he didn’t know he had. She believed when he didn’t, and now he does.

She’s a hearth he hadn’t known he wanted. She’s _Aloy_ , taming machines and tracking killers all before breakfast, and she’s two promised minutes that he’s never, ever deserved. She’s a wild blaze of hair and copper-green eyes, and freckles he wants to press his lips against. She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

He doesn’t know how to explain it, so he doesn’t say anything at all.

“You’re a lucky man,” says Teb quietly. “I’m glad she has you.”

She has him. Of course she does, just not in the way Teb thinks. Erend doesn’t even dare to hope.

“She saved me,” Teb goes on. “It was the year before my Proving, and I slipped while climbing. She was...she wasn’t even six. I landed in a herd of Striders, right in front of their Watchers, and she somehow led me out. She was this little kid, but she had so much determination. For _years_ , I waited for her to come to her Proving, and I wasn’t wrong. Who she is...she’s always been this way.”

Erend knows. He doesn’t have to have seen her as a child. He _knows._

“She doesn’t have anyone,” Teb tells him. “Do you know that?”

“She said she grew up Outcast,” Erend says. “That’s all.” He’s dying to know everything. He wants to ask Teb, to shake the other man until all Aloy’s secrets come spilling out, but he can’t. He can’t make himself do it, because the secrets aren't Teb’s to disclose.

“I’m glad she has you,” Teb repeats. “She needs you.”

Ultimately, gratitude means nothing. The only thing that matters is getting Aloy _out_.

 

****

 

First things first.

He washes. He shaves. They’re both major victories, and he feels better than he has in the indeterminate time he's been out.

He hates that.

He doesn’t have his armor. He asks for it, and Tandin and Adar exchange a significant glance. “Seriously?” Erend says, annoyed, but when they grudgingly bring it, his stomach crawls into his mouth.

Suddenly, he understands exactly how lucky he is to be alive.

His gambeson is triple-thickness hardened boar leather soaked in a concentrated solution of fire kiln and freeze rime, then quilted with tempered steel panels. It’s the finest craftsmanship in or out of Mainspring, and it has been utterly reduced to useless slag.

He honestly has no idea how they even cut him out of it.

This style of gambeson is affectionately called arrow-breaker, and it’s a badge of honor to leave the arrowheads embedded in the leather. Erend didn’t get hit with arrows; fire and spit, he got hit by an entire damn army, and it _shows_.

“...is this gonna look incredible, or just ridiculous?” he finally asks.

It’s a moot point. He’s barely supporting his own weight, and the heavy armor is completely out of the question. Instead, he struggles into new undercoat, the orange and white stripes fresh and bright. Over the wide belt, the round bellyplate sags at his waist, and he frowns. So much muscle, lost. It's going to take  _forever_ to regain it.

“You know all that’s not necessary,” Adar points out quietly.

“I can’t show up naked,” Erend snaps, and immediately feels guilty. “Look - it’s this or a bedsheet.”

In the end, it’s everything he’d wear except the armor. He’s already shaking from the effort, and grinding his teeth in frustration. Tandin has to loop the yellow scarf around Erend’s neck.

He’s clean and dressed, but he's never felt so useless. He’s upright, but _barely_ . He’s tottering like an old man, leaning on a knob-headed cane for full effect, and Tandin’s _still_ supporting most of his weight. The Vanguardsman, for his part, is keeping up a cheerful litany of slag.

Adar was Ersa’s second, and he’s followed Erend in her stead, the solid leader of the second watch. Tandin’s run the third flawlessly, and it occurs to Erend that he ought to make that official. “Remind me to promote you,” he says, shuffling along.

Tandin snorts. “That’s all it’s took? Should’ve kicked you in the knees _years_ ago.”

“I haven’t done it yet,” Erend warns.

“Wait, wait,” Tandin goes on, and Erend does _not_ like the gleeful twist of the Vanguardsman’s face. “Not the knees. Nope. Should’ve gotten you to your _lady_ -”

“Shut up,” Erend hisses. “Just - shut up.”

“You need me,” Tandin reminds him. “Cap, you are at my mercy.”

He knows. Oh, he knows.

 

****

 

The village is _destroyed_.

Erend doesn’t remember being brought down from the butte, and he doesn’t remember being brought inside Meridian’s walls. He knows the fighting was bad, but he didn’t expect-

He doesn’t know what he expected. The battle is over - the _war_ is over - but the cost is staggering. The fires are out and dead, and he’s been unconscious long enough that a decent amount of the debris has been collected into huge, monstrous piles. The streets are mostly clear, makeshift housing constructed from cloth and tarp and leaves, whatever can be scavenged. The maizelands are a sea of crushed and blackened stalks, the walls of their irrigation channels toppled to create stagnant, muddy pools. He knows Avad is doing everything he can, browbeating nobles into assisting and emptying his own coffers. There’s enough food stored for one failed harvest, but it’s still going to be more than a few lean seasons.

Erend doesn’t have to ask if the water was spoiled by corpses. He can smell the fires still burning the dead.

He remembers the end of the Liberation. The Carja who would become Shadow were retreating into the west, and Avad walked the streets of Meridian to the cheers of his people. Erend should have been old enough to know better, but he’d still been a stupid kid. The drinking was still a game, not the choking shackles it would become, and he’d been focused on the triumph of winning. In his bones, he remembers the smoke and death, but he can’t picture specific moments. He doesn’t remember destruction like this, and maybe it hadn’t been this bad. Oseram cannons thundered against Meridian’s walls, but Avad’s makeshift army hadn’t stooped to hurting the people - his people - this way.

“Cap, you okay?” He’s shuddered to a halt at the edge of the wall, and Tandin’s watching him carefully.

He didn’t know it was this bad. He didn’t _know_ -

If he’d fought harder, Erend could have brought down the machines sooner, and maybe-

_Maybe-_

“Captain,” Tandin says quietly.

Like some ungainly five-legged animal, they slowly make their way to the Vanguard barracks.

He doesn’t want to do this, but he needs to do it. They’re his men, and he really doesn’t want them to see him leaning on Tandin like some half-wit elder. He almost turns around, but Tandin tightens his grip on Erend’s elbow. “Cap,” he mutters, “please. We need this.”

He doesn’t want to admit it, but Erend needs it, too. He needs to see his men assembled. He needs their easy camaraderie. He needs the confidence they’d given him when he didn’t deserve it, when he was drunk off his ass and shaming Ersa’s legacy with his very existence. He needs to return the favor, to stand in front of them and tell them he knows exactly how hard they fought.  

Adar’s given him brief details. Kagget died manning the cannons at the city gate. Nyler made it though the final battle, but didn’t make it much further. Hodar, Althed, Rett, Guggin - all gone. Half the Vanguard: men he’d fought with, men he’d fought _for_. Ersa’s men, and then his own.

The blood cost roils in his stomach.  

The survivors are standing in front of him. They _all_ look like they’re just this side of dead, and they’re looking at _him_ with the same shellshocked expression.

“What,” Erend makes himself say. “I got something on my face?”

No one says anything.

Fire and spit. Ersa died, and he’d thought it was the worst moment of his life. He’d been wrong. This, _this_ , standing here in front of those who managed to live-

“We’re not pretty, are we,” he tries again, and then Erend, Captain of the Sun King’s Vanguard, surges forward. “Look at us,” he says. “The world took us to its anvil and hit us with everything it had. It broke our spines and our teeth and our friends. They put the Vanguard at the front of the line - we _went_ to the front of the line, we walked there ourselves because that’s what we _do_ , that’s who we _are_ \- and by the forge, we got hit hard.”

There’s a frisson of scuffing boots, a few subtle shoulders bumped for comfort, a few scattered sniffles. Some of them are looking at the ground, some at the sky, some at nothing at all.

“We’re not pretty,” Erend says again. “And you know what? We aren’t supposed to be. We liberated this city not once, but _twice_ , and the second time, we liberated it along with the whole damn _world_. You saw the machines come up. You saw the sky turn red. You saw the end coming and what did you do?”

“Hit it,” Kip offers, wiping an arm across his nose. He’s got the other arm in a sling, a heavy swath of bandage where his hand should be. “We hit it like a hammer.”

“Damn _right_ .” Somehow, Erend puts all his weight on his own two feet - well, two feet and the stupid cane - and lifts his chin. “We lost good people. We lost our friends. We lost our _brothers_. Know what we didn’t lose? The whole damn world. That’s a hard trade-off. I mean, look at us. We didn’t come out pretty, but guys, let’s be honest - we weren’t that good-looking to begin with, right?”

“Speak for yourself, Cap!” someone calls out, and there - he knows he has them, and he almost _cries_.

“I’m proud of you,” Erend says. “Ersa would be proud of you. But you know what? That doesn’t matter. You should be proud of _yourselves_ . You looked at those crazy machines, and you said _I can hit that_ . You said _I can do this_. You didn’t give up - none of you did. The ones that are here, the ones that aren’t - you kept going, and the world’s still here because you idiots don’t know when to give up.” He swallows against the tears, and makes himself grin. “And fire and spit, you came out looking better than I do.”

“Not hard,” someone else says, and Erend points to the heckler.

“I heard that. Gate duty. For a _week_.”

A chuckle ripples through, and then he’s doing his best not to fall as he walks through them, clasping hands and slapping shoulders. They all look like hell, but by the forge, they’re _his_ and he’s theirs, and if he’s coughing a little, so are they.

Finally, Kip grabs at his arm. “Cap,” he says, desperately serious, “you kissed her, right? End of the world and all-”

“Shut up,” Erend says, a bubble of fond warmth rising in his chest.

 

****

 

The city is still bleeding, but Avad makes sure the Nora leave with as much ceremony as valued allies deserve. Erend has no information beyond what he’s told, and what he’s told is that the Nora are so desperate to get out of these cursed lands they’ve accept the offered escort without hesitation.

He has to be there when formalities are exchanged. There’s no way he can’t.

It’s both worse than he’s feared, and better. He’s leaning on a cane and it’s taking everything he’s got just putting one foot in front of the other, but his men are there, walking with him, deliberately slow so they don't outpace him.

They’re scrubbed clean and freshly bandaged. They’re all beaten and battered, but still standing straight and strong.

He’s so damn _proud_. Ersa would be proud, but Erend has her beat. Oh, he has her beat.


	23. Chapter 23

 He stands with his men. He stands with his king.

“You good, Cap?” Tandin mutters at his side.

He _hurts_ , but it's just another hit. He's good at being hit.

“Just warn us before you hit the ground,” Tandin continues. “You know. So we have time get out of the way. We don’t all need to look like idiots.”

“You’re all heart.”

“Just keeping the Vanguard’s image in mind.”

The Carja guard assemble nearby, their ranks just as spare and beaten. “We look better,” Kip observes. “Or worse. Which one means they’re bungs?”

Nyler would make a smart-ass comment, and his absence yawns like a missing tooth.

Avad makes his way down the line. When he gets to Erend, he pulls him into a firm embrace. “My brother,” he says quietly. “My heart rejoices to see you. I trust you’re healing well?”

“I’m upright, for now.” It’s _good_ to see Avad. It’s good to see anyone who’s not actively bleeding. “Let’s get this thing done before they change their mind.”

“They’re her people, Erend. She isn’t their prisoner.”

Anger kindles in his chest. “Is she?”

Avad gives his hand one last squeeze. “You’re the one who keeps saying she makes her own decisions.”

Erend mutters, but can’t protest.

It’s not unexpected to see Talanah there - as Sunhawk of the Lodge, her status assures she attends everything Avad does - but there's still a frisson of surprise. She’s dressed in full Sunhawk regalia, almost outshining the Sun King himself, but instead of her helmet, there’s a thick swath of bandage on her cheek and down her neck.

He vaguely remembers the cloying wrongness of metalburn, but it’s swirled in the dense, incomprehensible storm of everything he can’t recall.

She slows when she walks by. “Welcome back to life,” she says, and snorts when his eyes flick down to the bandage. “They tell me it’s going to be an incredible scar. I’m glad; it’ll give everyone a reminder of how fiercely we fought for the city.”

He thinks of Aloy, of covering her body with his own, and fire, so much fire-

 _Make yourself a fortress_ , says Ersa-in-his-head, and yeah, he’d forgotten. He breathes in slowly, breathes out even slower, and gradually, his heart stops pounding.

The Nora approach the far end of the bridge. They won't cross the stones, lest they enter tainted Meridian. He sees the wild blaze of her hair before anything else, but _there she is_ , standing between Varl and his mother, the War-Chief Sona.

Fire and spit, fire and _spit_. She's alive, she's _alive_ , and his body takes one lurching step forward before he's back in control.

Tandin misinterprets the action as an impending faint, and grabs his elbow. “Fine, it's fine,” Erend hisses.

He's a moth. He's fragile and freezing, desperate to throw himself into the fire.

Avad walks out to the Nora. Aloy is the only one to reach for his welcoming hand. She’s dressed in simple Nora leathers, and there's a hitch in her step and a hard clench in her jaw. Half her face is a stark, mottled purple.  

“She looks better than you,” Tandin quips, but Erend’s so lost he can’t even react. She’s alive. She’s _alive_.

Her eyes dart through the crowd, and when they lock on him, he almost leaves his body.

It’s good he’s not standing with the Sun King. It’s good he’s nowhere near. He’s shaking in Tandin’s grip, his heart in his mouth.

Avad and Sona converse. Aloy participates, but her eyes flick back to Erend.

Sona and Varl make their farewells. They walk away.

Avad walks back to the city. Aloy comes with him.

 

****

 

Erend doesn't know what he's doing.

He thinks he may actually be passing out.

When Aloy comes across the bridge, Talanah gives her a quick hug. “Thrush,” the Sunhawk says warmly. “We'd feared the worst.”

“A week with the Nora.” Aloy grimaces. “What was worse, exactly?”

“You're welcome to stay in Meridian as long as you'd like,” Avad tells her. “A house will be made available-”

She's already shaking her head. “Just...somewhere quiet. Anywhere.”

“Your injuries,” Avad says. “Are they serious? Do you need treatment?”

Aloy glances at Erend, her eyes raking across him. She’s seeing his lack of armor, the way Tandin’s at his elbow, the stupid cane he’s leaning on. “Quiet,” she repeats. “Without people.”

She could have gone into the jungle. She could have disappeared into the tall grass. She could have walked away from the Nora camp and into the wilderness, and she _didn’t_.

“We’ll find you a place,” Avad promises. “For now, please come.”

The throng of people closes around them, and Avad parts the crowd like a boat in a river.

There’s only one functional elevator. The ones on the side closest to the Spire are heavily damaged, the great structures bent and snapped like stalks of maize. Oseram steelworkers have been working day and night, but it’ll take weeks to get them back. In the meantime, the elevator tucked on the northern side of the butte has been taking the duty of three.

It’s a crush of Carja soldiers and Oseram Vanguard. Erend leans against the gilded bars, his head buzzing. Aloy squeezes in by his shoulder, and down between their bodies, he reaches for her hand the same moment she reaches for his.

She’s right here. She’s alive, she’s okay, and she’s right here. Her fingers are wrapped around his with bone-crushing force, and it’s the most comforting pain he’s ever felt in his life.

He is _never_ letting go.

 

****

 

The day catches up with him like a Stalker’s unseen pounce, and Erend’s barely out of the elevator before he’s abruptly sitting on the boardwalk. “Come on, Cap,” Tandin says, hauling him back up. “Been an intense morning of standing. Almost done.”

Aloy’s still gripping his hand. “What’s wrong?” she asks sharply.

“Nothing,” Erend manages. “It’s fine. Just need a second.”

“He shaved for you,” Tandin says cheerfully.

The look Aloy gives him is searing.

By some stroke of luck, his apartment is closer than the clinic. “If you die in there, nobody’s going to find you,” Tandin warns.

“You can’t have my stuff,” Erend retorts.

Avad breaks in. “Sleep, my friend. I’ll ask that a healer checks in.” He glances at Aloy. “There are quiet rooms at the palace, and Marad said he made Olin Delverson’s place available to you-”

She just shakes her head.

“I see,” Avad says easily. “Rest, my friends. We’ll speak later.” He touches Aloy’s shoulder, and she almost doesn’t flinch. “The sun shines on our city to have you back among us. Please don’t hesitate to ask for what you need.”

As soon as they’re in the door, Tandin unceremoniously drops Erend onto the closest couch. “I’m done carrying you,” he says. “Any chance you’re going to make it up the stairs?”

“Nope,” Erend says. “I plan on staying here until I die.”

“I’m taking your stuff, then.”

“You gotta split it with the rest of the guys.”

“You’re no fun, Cap.” He looks at Aloy. “Don’t try to lift him. He’s even heavier than he looks.”

“I was gonna promote you,” Erend says.

As Tandin heads toward the door, he cocks his head at Aloy, and she warily follows. “It’s fine,” Erend hears the Vanguardsman mutter, “but he’s in rough shape. You both - sorry, not my place, but you look like you could use some sleep too.”

“What can I do?” she asks.

“You’re here,” Tandin says. “Aloy...we’re really, really glad you’re here.”

She doesn’t say anything. She’s not sure if it’s good to be here or not.

He wonders if she thinks this is just the best of a long list of bad options.

Tandin leaves, and Erend leans his head on the back of the couch. Aloy is here - she’s right _here_ \- and he’s so exhausted and raw he has to swallow back a cloying vertigo. It’s more walking - more _movement_ \- than he’s done in days, and he can’t even hide that it’s more than he should have tried. His entire body is shaking with the effort.

Aloy perches on the edge of the couch just out of arm’s reach, so tightly coiled she looks like she’s about to shatter.

“You look...good,” he offers.

Her face twists, a naked war between irritation and hysterical tears. “Erend.”

“What? You do.” She's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, even with the dark shadows beneath her eyes and the jagged scar at her jaw.

He’s got a pretty good idea about how bad he looks. He looks like he’s been put on an anvil and tenderized like a boar steak, and despite the day’s heat, he’s still a little chilled. The deep gash on his calf hasn’t really stopped bleeding, despite however many stitches. “It’s good to see you.”

She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even look at him, just absently plays with the pale slice of carved bone she wears on a leather thong around her neck.

“Hey,” he says quietly. “You okay?” She’s not. She’s so very clearly, obviously not, and he needs to get her back. “The Nora-” he swallows back a hot flush of anger. “What’d they do? What did they _say?_ ”

“I’m their Anointed. What else is there to say?”

 _No._ This is not who she is. This is worse than that night on the balustrade. She’d been steeling herself for the oncoming storm, and now that they’ve made it through, she’s just tired and bruised.

He feels exactly the same way, but fire and spit, he can help her. He has to. She’s light and life and heat, and he needs all of those right now. He needs her to _be_ all of those things, because that’s who she is. Sitting here with her feels like an apocalyptic eclipse, like the sun’s gone out but no one knows when or how it’s going to return.

He already saw the end of the world. He _survived_ it.

“Talk to me,” he says. She came here for a reason. She came _home_ with him. She came here the night they discovered Olin’s treason, and then she’d come back again when she’d ridden in concussed on one of her impossible mounts. She’d pulled him back to himself in Brightmarket, and she’d thrown her arms around his neck when she’d found him on the ridge at the Spire. Some part of her knows he's safe, and he wants to prove her right.

By the forge, he wants to prove her right.

She’d grabbed his hand in the elevator, and he wants that back. He wants _her_ back. Fire and spit, there’s no room in his chest for his lungs, and she’s too far away to touch. Her name has been the only word in his mouth for _days_ , but instead, he just says, “Please?”

 _I love you_ is stuck in his throat, and he can’t. He _can’t_.  

“I thought.” She swallows, and then because she’s Aloy, pushes herself ahead. “There was so much blood, Erend-"

“There was a lot of blood all over,” he points out.

“Don't. Just - _don't._ " She actually snarls at him, a terrifying noise like a cornered Sawtooth, and fire and spit, he needs to shut up, _shut up_ \- “There was too much blood and you were just _lying there-_ ”

She'd thought he'd died too, or was close to it, and her fingers are digging deep holes in the upholstery.

“You,” he says fiercely, but then all the words dry up in his mouth. He can't tell her about all the long months of nightmares, about shock wax and then metalburn, and then how it actually _happened_ , of how he’d been so terrified, tucking his body around hers as the rockets exploded around them.

He can’t tell her that. He can’t tell anyone.

“I asked about you,” he tries. “Drove them all crazy, but I couldn't _get_ to you. I _tried_ , but-” he hadn’t even made it out of bed.

“Days, Erend,” she snaps. “The city was burning, and no one would tell me anything. Sona was pushing _so hard_ to leave, and Varl _didn’t know-”_

She’d been walking stiffly across the bridge, and it’s only now he’s seeing the way her tunic bunches up around her middle, around the heavy bandages she’s hiding. He’d thought the sharp tang of hintergold was _him_ , but it’s both of them.

He’d thought she’d been curled in on herself because she’s upset, and she _is_ , but she’s also clenched around a hard knot of pain.

“They wanted to leave,” she says. “And they wouldn’t tell me. They wouldn’t _ask_. I’m their Anointed, their stupid savior, and they wouldn’t answer _one stupid question_.”

They wouldn’t tell her if he was alive, and he feels like throwing up.

Varl had stomped around the edges. Teb had said it outright. Whatever else the Nora thought, they’d desperately wanted her to return to the Embrace, and Erend can’t _imagine_ their disgust that their Anointed was demanding to know about an Oseram freebooter. Varl had been angry she’d spent so much time talking to him the night before the battle. He’d been angry that the Nora were outside their sacred lands, and he’d been the one Nora willing to cross the courtyard to even say so.

“Teb,” he tries. Something about mismatched cloth-

“He was the only one,” she chokes out. “Sona said it wasn’t important. She said he should stop talking to the Carja, that the war was over and we had to leave. He was the only one who _listened._ ”

Erend almost remembers that first visit. He remembers not quite waking up, and then that hard spike of fear. He’d thought she was dead, and she’d thought the same thing.

“I didn’t believe him.” She swallows hard. “I couldn’t, not until he said _two minutes_ , and then I knew it was you.”

He almost kisses her then. He almost hauls himself across the couch to say _I love you_ , because he _does_ , desperately, painfully, the emotion filling his chest so hard he almost can’t breathe. If he can’t touch her, he’s going to die, but she’s folded up inside herself, and he _can’t._

“Yeah, well,” he says. “You promised.”

“Why?”

Fire and spit, _he_ doesn’t know. He’s already gotten far more than two minutes, and he didn’t even deserve _that_. “You like me.”

She stares at him for a long moment, brow furrowed.

“You keep coming back,” Charming Oaf points out. “What else am I supposed to think?”

“I don’t belong to them,” she mutters, and narrows her eyes at him. “I don’t belong to you, either.”

“I know,” he says quietly.

“You know why they call them Braves?” She toys with her necklace again. “It’s something they are. They’re brave, or they’re mothers, or they stitch. They hunt. They choose to be those things.”

He listens.

“Outcast,” she says bitterly. “Cursed. I didn’t choose those, and I didn’t choose Anointed either.”

“I know.”

“Do you want to know something?” She touches her face with her hands, and he thinks she’s just gently probing at the deep bruises under her eyes until he sees how her fingers are shaking. “I wasn’t even born, Erend. I don’t get a choice about saving the world; I was _made_ for this.”

He almost tells her then. _I love you_ , he almost says. _I’ve loved you from the moment I met you_. _You’re light and life and everything that’s warm in this world. You saved me when I didn’t think I could be saved, when I didn’t_ deserve _to be saved_.

He almost tells her that he’s the moth, and he’s been desperately throwing himself at all the glass in the world trying to get to her flame.

He can’t tell her. He can’t physically say it, and it’s burning in his chest. “You’re more than that,” he tries, but all the reasons why are all clogging his throat. “So much more.”

“How would you know?” she snaps.

Erend isn’t the sort of man who’s good with words, but this is Aloy. Aloy, stubborn and forthright. She’s the perfect kill and a breeze in tall grass. She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and he loves her so much he can’t even breathe.

“It’s been three months since I had a drink,” Erend tries.

She shakes her head. “You did that on your own-”

“Yeah, but I didn’t have a _reason_ to.”

Her jaw clenches. “And what reason is that?”

“There’s this pretty girl from the middle of nowhere,” he says quietly. “She keeps showing up and telling me I’m better than I am, and she keeps being right.”

Aloy is silent, and for a long time he’s absolutely sure it’s the wrong thing to say. If he weren’t pinned to the couch by his own fatigue, he’d be panicking, but all he feels is a slow, inexorable calm.

It’s as close to _I love you_ as he can get.

“Do you really mean that?” she finally asks.

“Hammer to steel.”

She leans her cheek against the back of the couch, something in her body losing the tiniest bit of tension. “...it’s good to be here.” Her voice is small and damp.

She’s here. She’s _here_. She’s life and light, and she doesn’t even know it. He’s exhausted and aching, but by the forge, he’s going to keep trying to tell her.  


	24. Chapter 24

It’s not even midafternoon, and Erend _really_ wants to listen to her talk. He wants to sit here and bathe in Aloy’s brightness, but in the end, he doesn’t even fall asleep. He just passes out, awkwardly draped on the couch.

At some point, the urge to piss overcomes the exhaustion, and he staggers to the toilet, holding himself with shaking hands. When he’s done, he sways in place at the bottom of the stairs, trying to decide if sleeping in his own bed is worth the effort. The light has changed, the orange sunset casting long shadows through the open windows.

Aloy is curled up on the far end of the couch. Her arms are tucked under her head, and she’s pulled one of the long cushions around herself like a barricade.

If Erend goes upstairs, he can’t see her. The last time she was here, she’d disappeared almost before he could say goodbye, and if that happens right now, he’s absolutely sure he won’t survive it.

There's a rug on the floor, and he's already down when it occurs to him that he's really not going to want to get up. It isn’t comfortable; nothing is comfortable. Everything hurts, and his body is shrilling with her proximity.

He wonders about her injuries. The final battle is a blur of pain and blood, but there has to have been something he missed. Some moment he left her unguarded, and he  _shouldn't_ have.

This apartment was never Ersa’s space. She'd had her own rooms in the palace, which Erend had never questioned; she'd been the captain, but in retrospect, of course she and Avad had wanted to be closer. When he’d become captain, he’d elected to stay where he was. If he’s not in the barracks with the men, he’s walking the walls, and he's had no need to spend his nights anywhere else.

Aside from the odd casual lover, he's always been here alone, and Aloy’s presence blows this house open just as surely as a jar of blaze exploding in his foyer.

Even asleep, Aloy is bright and sharp. In sun-drenched Meridian, he’s never starved for warmth, but this is different. He’s remembered her like a fever-dream when she’s not around, but in her presence, he ignites like a flare. She’s a blazing fire, a hurricane that strips him down to naked flesh, but as he’s lying here on the floor, he doesn’t feel pain. He feels...warm. Almost even calm.

Fire and spit, he loves her. He _needs_ her, and he doesn’t want to. He’s already terrified of holding her down, of holding her back if she doesn’t want to stay. He wants to be satisfied with the scraps he’s given, because he doesn’t deserve more than that.

She’s asleep on his couch, in his home, and he’s never once thought of it as _home_ until right at this moment, and he hates himself a little for that. It feels like using her, like he’s taking something from her without her consent. She already has half of the world making demands of her. He knows how to take a hit, and his job right now is to take hits on her behalf. He should be defending her, not being one of too many screaming mouths.

He thinks of tucking himself around her as rockets explode, and the bandage at her waist that is undeniable proof of his failure. This is his space, and if she can use it as a quiet refuge, he needs to think of it that way, too. His sole purpose right now is to shield her from the world, and he absolutely needs to swallow back his own howling want.

 

****

 

He dreams about Glinthawks. His arms are too weak to swing his axe, and he's doused in stream after stream of chillwater, encased in ice like some frozen Ancient relic.

He wakes up shivering and shaking. Aloy stares at him from the couch with huge eyes.

“You yelled,” she says.

It takes way too long for his heart to show enough for him to speak. “I...dream." She's still staring, so he swallows. “It was the Spire,” and then makes himself add: “This time, anyway.”

He can't tell her about all the times he's had her blood on his hands. He  _can't._

“In mine, I fall,” she says quietly. “I’m in one of the facilities, and I make a stupid mistake. I slip or I miss, and suddenly I'm lying there broken. I can't move.”

That’s a new twist his subconscious is going to _love_.

“HADES wins,” she goes on, her voice closing in on itself. “The whole earth is stripped bare, everything gone black and poison...”

“Well.” It’s not quite Charming Lout, but it’s as close as he can get right at this moment. “If this is a competition, you definitely win. Mine never result in the end of the world.”

She shoots him a sour look.

 _I love you_ , he almost says. _The end of the world would be nothing compared to losing you._

“...why are you on the floor?” she asks.

“Hurt too much to go upstairs.”

She nods, concern abruptly abated, and her head drops back to the pillow.

 

****

 

Erend should still be in the clinic. Arguably, so should Aloy. At some point, the animal part of his brain takes over, and he crawls upstairs and into his own bed. Anything after that is hazy and indistinct. The nightmares roll over him like low-hanging clouds, but he hurts too much to move.

He opens his eyes, and she's curled on the other side of the bed, out of reach and as close to the edge as she can get, hidden in a nest of her own blazing hair. It feels like an impossible gift, to have her right there, and to have her trust him enough to allow him into her most vulnerable space.

 _I love you,_ he almost says, but the words won't form into sound.

Another time, he crawls toward consciousness at the sound of voices. Aloy’s sitting up, her back to him. Her shirt’s hiked up over her ribs as a woman he doesn’t know kneels to examines her.

“Ravager bullets?” the woman asks. She’s older, a crown of white hair neatly covered by a scarlet wrap.

“Three.”

The woman clicks her tongue. “Lucky to be standing, then. Seen too many of these lately, most not as lucky as you.”

“Straight through,” Aloy says dully.

There’s a pause. “No gut damage? This one’s so close-”

She shakes her head.

“Whoever sewed you up did good work.”

Aloy says nothing.

Ravager bullets. Erend doesn’t remember a Ravager, but there’s a lot he doesn’t remember. He should have taken that hit. That was his job-

He doesn’t realize he’s asleep again until the healer’s gently stretching his arm. “There you are,” she says, and raises an eyebrow. “Six days, and I bet you still have no idea who I am.”

He can’t refute that.

“Danna,” she says with a wink. “Don’t worry. It’ll come back to you soon enough. How’s the pain?”

“Good,” he says. “It’s...good.”

“Your man Adar said you’d say that. He also said you were on your feet yesterday, and shouldn’t have been.”

Erend absolutely does not glance at Aloy. “I needed to be.”

“Baby steps,” Danna says firmly. “Pushing yourself will just set you back.”

That fact, at least, has become painfully obvious. It’s completely contrary to everything he’s ever done, and he's spinning like an untethered compass.

“Look, Captain,” the healer says. “Between that and your leg, I should haul you back to the clinic. The only reason I'm not is because there’s still plenty who need beds.”

She puts a fresh bandage on the deep gash on his calf, and leaves a bottle of distilled hintergold and another of ember.

It takes absolutely everything he's got not to take the hintergold in one long swallow, but he’s working on being Ersa’s brother before he’s his father’s son, and he _won’t._   

Aloy is here, and he won't.

 

****

 

Something between them has to break. He can feel it stretched like a wire. He knows the moment when muscle fails.

Well. He _thought_ he’d known. He’d fought to that point at the Spire, and then gone so far beyond he’s _still_ empty as a broken jar. It’s been days, and there’s nothing but pain where muscle used to be. He doesn’t want to ask if it’s going to get better.

Erend’s always been solid muscle and brute strength. Suddenly, he’s lost the one solid reference he’s used his entire life, and he has no idea what to do.

Instead, he lets himself sink into his own bed, Aloy not quite close enough to touch. She’s still here. She’s _here._ The nightmares tear and claw at his skin, but when he gasps awake, she’s here next to him, life and light and heat. She’s alive. She’s _alive._

He wants to touch her so badly. He needs to sink his fingers into the bright cloud of her hair and reassure himself. He needs to feel some part of her that’s not covered in blood, a part that’s not iced over, not charred and dead.

She flinches from the most casual contact, and what he wants is anything but casual. He needs to ground himself, to let himself feel how solid and real and safe she is, but he’s afraid she’ll bolt like a rabbit if he tries. Instead, he tucks his hands against his own body and consoles himself with just watching the slow rise and fall of her chest.

He is such a mess, and he is so in love, and he has no context for any of this.

 

****

 

He’s mostly asleep when he hears Aloy whisper his name.

He turns his face to her, and she’s sitting on the edge of the bed, one elbow tucked against her side. She is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and she makes him ache in ways that have nothing to do with his battered body. She's fragile but absolutely _not,_  and the dichotomy shreds him.

“I should go somewhere else,” she says. “I’m just keeping you awake.”

“ _No._ ” He absolutely doesn’t want her to go. He absolutely doesn’t want her to be anywhere other than right here. Charming Oaf helpfully adds, “Does it _look_ like you’re keeping me awake?”

“You seem to have it figured out,” she allows.

“I told you you’re always welcome here,” he says. “I meant it.”

“I remembered that.” She swallows. “I hoped it was okay. I hoped _you_ were okay. I didn’t know where else to go. I couldn’t stay with them, and I can’t-”

She can’t go into the wilderness. She’s hurt, and she’s hurting. The machines are still dangerous, and she doesn’t have the strength to draw a bow.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he says.

_I love you._

She’s going to say something. She’s going to say that she’s invading his space. She’s going to say she’s wasting his time, that she’s somehow impeding his recovery. He can see it in her face, the hard wariness that bubbles up when she’s spent too long in civilization. It's the same wariness that kept her sleeping in the tall grass beyond the Brightmarket gates.

“Aloy, hammer to steel, I’m glad.” He doesn’t know how to talk about that moment by the Spire, the one when he’d been so sure she was dead, and then she suddenly _wasn’t._  He can’t figure out how to explain the months of nightmares, of that terrifying moment when it all became _real_. He doesn’t know how to say that behind his eyelids, he’s seen a future without her a hundred times, and even though he’d fought with everything he had to keep that future from happening, it had almost happened anyway.

He doesn’t know how to tell her that having her right here, having her sitting across from him, feels like the first breath he’s taken in weeks.

“Plus,” Charming Oaf adds, “if you'd gone anywhere else, you'd have just gotten eaten by another Thunderjaw.”

Aloy shifts a little, wincing. “It wasn’t a Thunderjaw this time.”

“She’s branching out,” he teases, because he _has_ to. He’d throw up otherwise. “You still didn’t share.”

Her eyes go horribly blank. “I don’t want you to take hits for me, Erend.”

This is his territory. They’ve been over this ground. He heaves himself up to lean against the headboard. “Every hit I took was my choice,” he reminds her. “We talked about this.”

The new scar at her jaw ripples as she grinds her teeth. “I could have-”

“We would have lost everything,” he says firmly. “There’d be nothing left of us to even scrape together. You said it yourself: the whole earth, stripped bare.”

“It was my fight.” There’s a hard shiver of tears beneath the anger. “So many people died-”

“And you’d be dead along with them,” he says. “This wasn’t something you could do on your own, Aloy. You _know_ that.”

She’s silent.

“You’d have _tried_ ,” he goes on, because he knows her. She grew up outcast, and she’s the most stubborn person he’s ever met. He’s absolutely sure that if wanting help even _occurs_ to her, she shakes her head and just moves on.

“You wouldn’t have let me,” she finally says.

“Damn right.” And then, because he’s an asshole: “I _didn’t._ ”

“I thought you-” The words stop, a nauseous, lurching pause.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “Me, too.”

“You don't _understand_ ,” she snaps and then she's gripping the bone pendant at her neck. “Erend, you don't even _know_.”

“Then _tell_ me.” The wire between them stretches, but he’s already committed to whatever happens when it breaks. “Please, Aloy.”

She's not looking at him. She's not crying; it goes so much deeper than that, and fire and spit, he recognizes it. It’s the same miasma of grief that surrounded him on his worst days after Ersa died, when he’d been trapped in the bottom of a bottle and utterly convinced there was no point in coming back out.  

He could tell her he doesn't need to know, but he’s absolutely positive she's not talking to anyone else. If she has anywhere else to go, she'd have gone there, but she keeps coming back to him. It's more than he deserves, but it’s what she keeps giving him, and by the forge, he wants to be worthy.

She’s breathing hard, clutching at the pendant. He waits. She’ll tell him when she’s ready, or she won’t tell him at all, and he definitely won’t die if he doesn’t know.

“Rost,” she finally says, more to the slice of bone than to Erend. “He - he was a good man, and he’d already lost his own family, but they gave me to him when I came out of the mountain.”

Her father, or as close to one as she’s ever had.

“He wasn't even supposed to _be_ there, but Helis was - he killed _Rost_ instead of me.”

Suddenly, this is about the Proving, and his guts go very, very cold.

“Vala,” she goes on, choking on the words. “Varl’s sister. She talked to me. Do you even know what that means, Erend? She _talked_ to me, and I thought maybe we could have...but they killed her, too.”

 _Aloy doesn’t have anyone,_ Teb had said.

It's not just one person she'd lost at the Proving. It was _all of them_. The one she'd loved, and all the others she might have come to love...all this time, he's been thinking it was a lover or a sibling, but it's worse.

It’s so much worse.

“They took my hits,” she chokes out. “Rost pushed me, and - and _Vala_ \- so many arrows, and now _you,_  and they wouldn’t tell me about you, Erend. They wouldn’t tell me where you were, and they wouldn’t tell me if you were dead. I didn’t _know_.”

She’s lost everyone, and then she’d thought she lost him, and everything he could try and say to counter that withers in his mouth like ash. He doesn’t know if the Nora’s cruelty was deliberate, or just coincidental; he doesn’t know which is worse, and he doesn’t care.

_It’s obvious you don’t belong here._

She doesn’t. She _doesn’t_ , and he keeps thinking he understands, that he’s reached the absolute depth of her abuse, but then the ground falls away and he’s careening through new darkness.

He’s wanted to tell her he loves her for months, but it keeps getting stuck behind his teeth. Fire and spit, he’s suddenly abjectly grateful for his incompetence, because he understands _exactly_ how deeply those words will cut her. There’s no way to tell her she’s wanted without reminding her of everything she’s lost. He can’t tell her how vital she is, because even that simple admission will mark him for death in her mind.

He can’t say _I love you_ for the same reason he can’t tell her how she dies every night in his sleep. Ersa got him out and then she was murdered, and his whole life felt like it was over. Aloy had been offered a fresh start at her Proving, a chance at kinship and connection, and it had been brutally stripped away before she could even grasp it.

There’s nothing he can say. She’s entirely blank, her body a pale, tired statement that he can’t refute. He’s not good with words, but even if he were, he can’t erase what’s been done to her.

“Aloy.” Her name is the most precious sound in his mouth, and he makes himself speak. “Will you let me…?”

He's almost not even holding out his hands, his wrists barely turned. It's the slightest invitation, because he's dying and she's as stiff as a rabbit about to bolt.

He's seen her send an arrow into the heart of a Sawtooth without hesitation, and he’s _never_ seen more fear in her face.

There was the moment on the ridge, the moment she’d not been dead, when he’d reached out and she’s reached out, and there had been a single moment where it wasn’t two people, it was just one shuddery breath of desperation and relief.

Their hands had come together in the elevator the same way, fingers and palms and something raw and formidable, already tangled far beyond the point of salvation.

“Please,” he whispers. _I need this as much as you do_.

“Rost.” The word barely comes out. “He was the _only-_ ”

No one has ever held her except her dead father, and that isn’t a surprise, but fire and _spit_ , it’s still a sharp kick to his chest.

She moves like a wary fox, and then she’s right _here,_  her head awkwardly tucked against his chest.

His heart is not actually beating.

She’s breathing raggedly, and Erend _knows_ that sound. It’s grief seeping out from the very marrow of human bone, and it escapes like volcanic gas because it’s been trapped for too long and it has nowhere else to go. He made that sound when Ersa died, and Aloy is making it now.

He’d thought the world was over at that moment. He’d been so sure finding Ersa meant _saving_ her, and then as soon as she was in his arms, she was _gone,_ and the panic had crushed his chest like a Trampler-

He tries to think about what Aloy did. She’d lingered in the shadows even after he’d told her to go. She’d made him sleep when all his nerves were frantically firing all at once, and she’d laid down next to him with her hand fisted hard in his hair.

He remembers that, her hand in his hair. He’d needed the pressure, the grip just past the point of pain. He can’t do that to Aloy, not when she’s already primed to bite at the slightest restraint, so instead he just palms the side of her head, the way Ersa used to do when he was a small, scared boy.

He’s a moth. From the first moment he saw her, he’s been obsessed with the bright, urgent flame of her light. She flickers and shudders, a fire he can’t control and can’t avoid.  

He sinks his fingers into her hair, and it’s everything he’s ever wanted, but not in the way he’s thought he’d wanted it.  _I love you_ is stuck in his throat and he understands _why_. Her hands are fisted in his shirt, and fire and spit, he's never been more paralyzed.

Slowly, she wraps herself around him like roots claiming stone, her arms painfully tight around his ribs. She’s light and life and heat, and stupid, stupid Erend: he’s never _once_ considered that she’s needed his warmth as much as he’d needed hers.

He lets himself touch his lips to the wild blaze of her hair, and she makes a small, damp noise that isn’t a protest.

He loves her. He loves her _so_ _much_ , and she shatters him every single damn time.


	25. Chapter 25

When he wakes up, she’s moved back to the far edge of the bed. He wishes he'd felt her leave, or that he hadn't fallen asleep in the first place.

The first gray light is seeping in like rainclouds, but her hair still glows like flame.

She turns. “About last night…”

Charming Oaf comes out in full force. “What I heard was ‘don't die’,” Erend says. “I've already survived the end of the world. I feel like that should be a mark in my favor.”

“I'm still upset.” It’s delivered with a scowl, but it’s an admission that costs her dearly, and she’s clenched in on herself to bear the debt.

“But not at me,” he points out. “I mean, you aren't, right?” Charming Oaf scrabbles around, an ugly, ungainly attempt to either win her smile, or regain the loose-limbed safety of her body against his.

The scowl deepens.

Fire and spit, Charming Oaf needs to be taken out and unceremoniously executed, but the words keep spilling out. “Didn't anyone ever tell you your face might stick like that?”

She stands up with a wince. “Remind me why I came here again?”

“You like me,” Erend says smugly. “And...you wanted to cuddle.”

It's a risky gamble, but she looks so affronted he very nearly laughs out loud. “ _Cuddle?_ ” She holds the word like it's a strange, unpleasant insect. “What- I _didn't-”_

It's the most Aloy-like she's been in ages, and fire and spit, he loves her.

 

****

 

Erend walks. He’s slow and exhausted, but it’s something.

It’s definitely something.

 

****

 

He’s in the barracks all of ten minutes before the question bursts from Kip. “Not saying she’s staying with you, Cap,” the Vanguardsman says with a sly smile, definitely saying it, “but you’re kissing her, right?”

Erend pretends not to hear.

Kip holds up the bandaged stump at the end of his arm, a parody of tragic pain. “Take pity on the poor, crippled soldier-”

Erend sighs. “ _Enough_.”  

He wants to kiss her. He can still smell her, the intoxicating herbal earthiness, and the want crushes everything else in his chest. He wants to take last night and live it again and again until she thaws like a glacier in spring. He wants to find the things that make her smile and exploit them mercilessly.

He wants her to know how bright and vital she is. He wants to wrap her up in his arms and bury himself in her hair. Someday, he wants her to kiss him until she lets him lay her back in a mound of furs and take her apart with his fingers until she’s a damp, shuddery mess. He wants her to demand that her body be the only thing he ever drinks again.

There’s an insurmountable wall of pain between then and now, and he has no idea how to breach it, or if he even can.

It must show in his face, because Kip shoots Tandin an exasperated look. “Do we believe him? We can’t possibly believe him. What’s it gonna take?”

“It’s not up for discussion,” Erend snaps. “First person to mention it again gets to dig a latrine.”

“...we’re in the city, Cap.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Then it’s gonna be a _really_ hard dig.”

It’s not fair. It’s not fair, and it’s _not_ kind, not when his men have suffered so badly and put up with so much of his slag. This is a moment of cheer for them, but he _can’t_. His job is to protect her, and he can’t do that if he’s constantly raw and defensive.

When the others have gone, Adar is still standing there, considering him with an inscrutable expression.

“What’s up?”

“Captain, there was a time,” his second says thoughtfully, “when I was sure you’d never show restraint.”

Something inside of him squirms.

“I’m glad to be wrong,” Adar says, “but you know very well that an opening to strike may not happen twice, and if it does, it certainly won’t happen again.”

He grits his teeth. “This _isn’t_ a fight.”

“I didn’t say _she_ was the enemy, Captain,” his second says, and adds quietly, “The bottle isn’t your enemy either.”

 _Oh_.

Fire and spit.

It’s not something he’s thought about, but yeah.

Adar is absolutely right.

 

****

 

Ersa always said knowledge was the sharpest weapon, and even if Erend isn’t entirely sure what he’s really up against, he knows how to hone a blade. He’s still hobbling around like a palsied elder, but even if he’s not lifting weights and running around the walls, he knows the process of training, of doing one thing to proficiency and then moving forward.

Aloy has a lot in her head. She’d carried the weight of the battle for the Spire, and she’d had no one to consult with, not really. He knows there was someone on the other side of her jewel - her Focus, it’s her Focus - but he doesn’t know any more than that. She’s meted out savory morsels of information only under duress, and he’s pretty sure she’s staggering under the weight.

He’s never considered himself a smart man, but he's Ersa’s brother. He might not be able to understand all of it, but that’s not the _point_. The point is the process.

Getting sober was the hardest thing he’s ever done, and he’s starting to understand it will never, ever stop. He’s three months past his last drink and the need still clings to his bones. He _hurts_ and he’s scared and he’s sad, and the comfortable lure of the bottle sings to him with a crawling tone he can’t ignore.

He could be drunk right now, and healing wouldn’t matter. The pain could be a vague, distance monster, and he could float through its maw unconcerned. Sober, he’s finding everything to be too sharp and too bright, every movement infuriatingly slow and overwhelmingly inadequate. His body is going to heal, but he’s his father’s son, and the howl will never truly leave.

He wonders what it’s like for Aloy. He wonders what the howl is for her.

He thinks it might be _being alone_.

He knows it’s not something she wants. He’s seen her fight against it. She talks and prods and asks too many questions, but in the end, she absolutely has to walk away. Loneliness has been beaten into her marrow from the day she was born, and after her admission last night, he is suddenly very aware that every time she’s tried to claw her way out, the world has made damn sure she understood community wasn’t a thing that she got to have.  

Ersa got clever. Erend got tough. Aloy got solitary.

That first day he’d met Aloy, he’d known immediately that she and Ersa had so much in common. He just hadn’t realized _why_.

The thing is, she’s _good_ at being alone. He’d gotten good at drinking, but it wasn’t exactly an advantage. Tracking killers and mastering machines - Aloy can disappear into tall grass and override a Snapmaw without it even registering her presence. She can take down a bandit without alerting his friends, and she can take out his friends without any alarm being raised. She can look at bare dirt and see the details of a massacre that didn’t happen. He can knock the belly plate off a Sawtooth, and if she can take the perfect killing shot, it’s because she’s always fully prepared to take the machine on by herself.

Alone is a huge advantage for her. It's made her faster and smarter. Anyone seeing her from the outside envies her skill; Erend himself remembers swaying at the place where Ersa didn't die, and aching to have even a tenth of Aloy’s competence.

He knows how to get sober, and that’s by not drinking. It’s harder than it sounds, but the basic principle is simple. Ersa didn’t need to stop being clever, but maybe with Avad, she’d been able to relax a bit. Maybe she'd been able to let down her guard, to take off some of her armor, if only for a few hours.

The way to help Aloy is to gradually unwind her chains. He needs to convince her that she isn't a dark harbinger of death, and he _thinks_ she might be willing to listen. She’s come back to him when she’s needed to; he thinks somehow she almost believes, the way she’d made him almost believe he was more a useless drunk.

Charming Oaf has always been his best defense, a knee-jerk reaction to a world that saw a big, hulking boy as an immediate threat. If he's Charming Oaf, he might be big, but he's dumb and affable enough that no one tries to hit him.

Aloy is quick and fierce, and maybe, just _maybe_ , he can convince her she deserves a moment of calm.


	26. Chapter 26

 It's easier than he thinks it's going to be. “Going for a walk,” he announces.

He's ready to exaggerate the shakiness or do _whatever_ , but she's already right there with him. “Fresh air,” she immediately agrees.

Trust someone raised as a Nora - more or less - to go stir-crazy in the most beautiful city in the world.

Meridian is still rebuilding. Aloy gets quiet as they move along the walls, but Erend’s prepared for that. Just like Ersa told him over and over that getting hit wasn’t his fault, Erend needs to convince Aloy that she isn’t the cause of all this destruction.

The machines are a good place to start. “All the Corrupted machines we fought. The metal devil did that?”

Slowly, he draws the details out. Aloy’s annoyed at all the questions, but despite herself, she doesn’t leave. She lasts an hour longer than he thinks she’s going to, before the inevitable demand: “Why are you asking all this?”

“Captain of the Vanguard,” he reminds her.

She looks unconvinced. “I think you just want to hear me talk.”

Well...guilty as charged. He raises an eyebrow. “Is that so bad?”

She rolls her eyes.

“I like hearing you,” he says easily.

Aloy gives him an inscrutable look, and then hunches into herself a little. “Can we go somewhere else?”

Somewhere else involves stairs, and stairs are hard and they _hurt_ , but at the top is a gilded gate that Erend swings open. “Watchtower,” he explains once he’s got his breath back. “There’ll be a patrol up here around dusk, but not until then.”

They sit with their backs to the stone wall, away from the view. The tower gives a wide vantage of the ruined valley below, but if they sit against the stone balustrade, they’re just looking back at the gate and the tall city buildings beyond. General market noise - the merchants calling out their wares, the clatter of cart wheels on the stone - floats up in a vague, indistinct cloud. The vents spin lazily in the breeze, hypnotic and glimmering.

He’s going to pay for this tomorrow. His entire body is shaking from the effort, but it’s _worth_ it to see Aloy lean her head back against the balustrade, her eyes closed in relief. Erend’s always liked this particular post for its solitude, and as far as he’s concerned, they can stay up here until she’s ready to leave. They can stay up here forever.

Plus, the sky is relatively clear for once, and the radiating warmth from the stone feels _amazing_.

“Your turn,” she says after awhile.

“What, you want to hear me talk?”

She rolls her head toward him. “Don’t tell me you’re suddenly tongue-tied.”

“In front of a pretty girl?” He considers. “Only if she’s actually paying attention.”

She closes her eyes again. “I always pay attention. You know that.”

He _does_ know, but fire and spit, hearing her say it still makes his throat swell up and his stomach glow with pleasure.

“You okay?” he makes himself ask.

She’s just breathes for a long moment. “It’s frustrating,” she finally says. “I tried my best, and people still died. I’ve been working so hard for so long, and suddenly it’s _over_ , and I thought I could do so much better. I thought I could stop HADES earlier.”

“One person against an entire machine army,” Erend says. “I’d say you did all right.”

She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t have to. He can feel the energy change around her, a crackle of seething fury.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he says.

“I was _made_ for this, like-” she stabs the air with one hand- “like you’d forge a tool. I wasn’t even born.”

He still doesn’t understand that. She’s the most real thing he’s ever known. She’s light and heat, and he wonders if maybe that’s part of it. Whatever the mysterious process, if she was crafted like a sword, maybe the brightness is integral. Maybe her very essence has been polished to a brilliant sheen.

He’s pretty sure he doesn’t care. She hits him like a Watcher’s stunning blast, every sense blown wide open.

“You look just fine from here,” Charming Oaf says.

She should kill him. She should just kill him right now.

Aloy doesn’t kill him. She snorts, and the energy abruptly dissipates. “Still watching my...back?”

“Oh yeah.”

She huffs. “At least you’re honest.”

Quiet seeps in. The weather kites are just barely visible over the taller towers, and Erend watches their long tails flutter. The kites are like everything else in Meridian: unnecessary, extravagant, and incredibly beautiful. He doesn’t need a kite to tell him which way the wind is blowing, but he likes them anyway.

He thinks about Aloy, about the bright flag of her hair, the deep blue beads braided into a nest of flame. She’s beautiful and so very, very necessary. She’s right here, right _here_ , and her nearness is as warm and pleasant as the stone at his back.

Fire and spit, he loves her. He might as well say the rest of it. “Aloy...I know you had to go. I know you were running against the clock, and I get it now, the thing you were trying to stop. I just...now that it’s over, I want to hear about where you went.”

She frowns. “Really?”

“If you wanna tell me, yeah.”

“It’s over. Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters.”

She considers him for a long moment. “And if I don’t want to talk about it?”

“That’s absolutely fine,” he says. “It’s just...if you do, I want to hear.”

“Everyone wants to hear everything,” she grumbles.

“I don’t need to hear _everything_ ,” he says, even though he absolutely, desperately does. “I want to hear what you want to say.”

“You want to hear me talk. I know.”

“Well...yes-”

“Why does it have to be about _that_?” Fire and spit, she’s _angry_ with him.

“Look,” he says, and this is not happening, but this is definitely happening. “I dream, okay?”

That stops her cold.

“I _dream_ ,” he repeats. He can't say nightmare. He _can't._

“The Spire,” she says quietly. “You’ve said.”

“It’s not just about the Spire.”

She frowns.

“It’s…” Do it. Just fucking _do_ it. “Every time you come back, you- you’re bleeding-”

“That’s not true.”

“On the way to Pitchcliff, you took out three Bellowbacks and barely made it back to camp-”

“It wasn’t that bad-”

“And _in_ Pitchcliff, the Stormbird-”

“I had it! I didn’t need you rushing in-”

He feels his hands go to fists. “You were going to pull out of that one, too? I’m not saying you need saving, Aloy, I’m just saying every time I see you, it...it’s _bad_.”

The frown deepens dangerously, edging toward outright scowl, and fire and spit, he’s in _trouble_. “It’s bad to see me.”

“That’s not what I meant!” He’s saying this badly. He’s saying this _so_ badly. “I want you to come back here. I told you that-”

“Then why is this an issue?”

“The time you came back to Meridian,” he forges on. “You didn’t say what happened.”

“I crashed the Eclipse Focus network. I had bad information, but I got out-”

“Brightmarket,” he grinds out, and he can see it behind his eyelids. He can smell the metalburn clinging in his nostrils. “There was so much blood, Aloy-”

“You fell apart,” she snaps. “You completely fell apart-”

“I got _scared_.” His voice is too loud. He’s being too loud. “I got scared, okay, because-” how the fuck is he going to explain this- “I had to hold you _down_ , Aloy, and I-”

“You helped,” she says. “You needed to-”

“...I felt like my _dad_!” He makes himself breathe. “I felt...I had to hold you down, and I had to _hurt_ you-”

She’s silent.

“Of all the people in this world, Aloy, you are the person I would _die_ to not hurt, and I hurt you. I _had_ to. I didn't have a choice about it. Do you _understand_ that?”

“You can take a hit,” she says quietly, but it's not an indictment. It's almost an apology.

“I dream,” he says. “It’s- it’s constantly in my head, only it gets...twisted. Changed. Sometimes it’s things I saw happen to other people. The Red Raids. As a kid. Whatever. Sometimes it’s just made up. But it’s _you_ , Aloy. It's you every single damn time.”

She doesn't say anything.

“The Spire,” he says desperately. “I wanted to be there. Damn _right_ I wanted to be there. But then it happened anyway, and it was like everything, every single thing that shouldn't have happened-”

Her entire body has gone stiff. “Erend-"

She's going to apologize. She's going to flare like a furious Grazer and then she's going to bolt. She's going to bolt and he is never, ever going to see her again.

This isn't what he's meant. He's wanted to reassure her, and instead, he's just told her that the very thought of her tortures him.

Incompetent. _Stupid._

“I'm _scared_ ,” he tries again. “You are...Aloy, you're the closest thing I have to a friend, and fire and spit, I love you.”

He says it like it's nothing, like it's just part of the argument and not the confession of his entire being. It rolls into the next sentence, and he somehow keeps going.

“I just want to hear you talk,” he says. “I honestly don't care what it's about. You could recite Avad’s entire lineage, every single damn cousin that’s ever existed, and it would be _perfect_ , because it would be _you_. By the forge, I _miss_ you when you're gone, and if I'm scared...it's because I'm afraid you won't come back.”

“Why would you _miss_ me? After all that?”

Fire and spit. “Did you not hear the part where I like you?”

She huffs.

“Look,” he says. “You’re not gonna stay here. We both know that.” She doesn’t say anything, but by the set of her jaw, he knows she agrees. “Just...don’t be a ghost. Please? You don’t owe me anything, and hammer to steel, don’t let me tie you down, but if you just disappear, I swear I might go crazy.”

He’s vomiting words now. He’s gone and done this entirely wrong, and now he’s just scrabbling around, spewing slag because he doesn’t know how to shut up.

“‘Go crazy’,” she echoes, and impossibly, there’s an undertone of fond amusement. “You do realize this already sounds crazy.”

Charming Oaf shoves Erend aside. “I never claimed it wasn’t.”

“You really do miss me,” she says, and by the forge, he thinks it's sinking in.

“Hammer to steel. Is it _that_ hard to believe?”

“It's always good to see you,” she admits.

“Ha,” he says. “I knew she liked me.”

Aloy never touches anyone. She’d let him hold her only when she was guttering like a doused candle, and then she'd retreated as soon as she’d fortified herself.

Aloy, who never touches anyone, who is life and light and heat and the most beautiful, brilliant thing Erend’s ever seen, leans over to rest her head on his shoulder. “Idiot. Why do you think I keep coming back?”

****

 

That first day they’d met, he’d told her she could have a whole new life in Meridian. He’d been half-drunk, flirting as hard as he could, but now Erend understands: Aloy _could_ have a whole new life in Meridian, and it wouldn’t suit her at all. It wouldn’t be _her._

He loves her, and because he loves her, he wants her to do what she wants to do. It feels insane, but he absolutely wants her to leave.

 

****

 

He isn’t at all surprised when she retreats downstairs. He wants to sleep next to her, buried in the wild blaze of her hair, but he thinks of tall grass and how she’d made herself invisible, and he understands.

He understands, but that doesn’t stop the sharp pang of grief. He’s lucky she’s staying at all, but practicality has won out; they’re both still barely mobile, and in between short sojourns out of the apartment for food, sleep occupies them wholly.

It takes him way too long to realize it, but when he does, Erend feels like a complete bung. Aloy had crossed the bridge with nothing but the simple leathers she wore. She still has nothing, and she’s _said_ nothing. Hammer to steel, he’s absolutely sure she intends to re-equip herself piece by piece.

She saved the entire world. She deserves everything the world can give her, and by the forge, if she won’t ask for it, Erend damn well will.  

She’s napping in the nest she’s made on the couch, and Erend sneaks out to limp his way to Avad’s chief quartermaster. “Aloy needs kit.”

The quartermaster’s eyes go wide. Erend knows the man is being run ragged with the demands of rebuilding, but this takes priority. “I’ll consult with the craftsmen of the Lodge-”

“No decoration. It has to be simple, and the best you’ve got.”

The longbow is what he’s most concerned about. He’s seen her carry other weapons, but the longbow she’d had in Brightmarket was worn smooth with use, nicked and scratched but meticulously cared for. She wielded it like an extension of her body, and its replacement has to be exactly the same.

“What is all this?” Aloy asks, as the wrapped deliveries stack up in the foyer.

“I dunno,” he lies smugly. “Maybe it’s for you.”

She shoots him a look, but investigates.

The entire kit is everything he’s hoping for: made of the highest make and material, sturdy and beautiful in a subtle way that he’s honestly never seen from Carja artisans. The longbow itself is _perfect_. He’s absolutely sure it’s worth six months’ wages by itself. He has no idea how many favors Marad’s agents had to call in to get something like this so quickly, and he definitely doesn’t want to ask.

Aloy’s face goes soft and reverent as she handles the bow. “This is _beautiful_ ,” she murmurs, and fire and spit, this was exactly the right decision. “Erend...you shouldn’t have-”

“Oh, it’s not from me,” he says. “It’s from Avad, technically. There’s no way I could afford something that nice - not that I wouldn’t have bought it, if I could.”

“I can’t pay him back,” she protests. “Not right now, but maybe in-”

“These are not a gift,” Erend says firmly. “This is what you’re owed.”

It’s not what she wants to hear, and she works her shoulders with discomfort. “People _died_ -”

“People _lived_ ,” he reminds her. “And these are yours. Besides, what were you going to do? Wander around collecting Watcher scraps until you could make your own?”

She’s silent, and he was right. That was _exactly_ what she’d planned to do.

“You should have seen what they _wanted_ you to have,” he adds. “They were all set to give you the fanciest weaponry the Hunter’s Lodge has ever sent out.”

Her entire face twists in horror.

“I talked them down to this,” Erend says. “And they were _pissed_.”

“Well, I guess I should just say thank you.”

“I did get you the ammo,” he says, pointing to the bundle of ridgewood. “That’s definitely a gift. The finest sticks I could find.”

“Wait,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “How did you know how to size the bow?”

“I watch your back,” he reminds her smugly.

She actually _grins_ , the longbow clutched to her chest with the glee of a child.

Fire and spit, it’s the most Aloy-like expression he’s seen since maybe even before Pitchcliff. He is absolutely, stupidly, crazily in love.


	27. Chapter 27

So. He’s said it.

He’d snuck it into a longer sentence. He’s not sure if that counts.

He’s not even sure that Aloy _noticed._

He wants her to notice. He wants her to _know_. Now that he's said it out loud _to her face,_  it's become an obsession burning a bright as the copper blaze of her hair.

He composes a speech in his head. He thinks about it when he’s walking the walls, his stiff muscles protesting every movement. He thinks about it while he’s slowly pounding at the practice dummy’s hard-packed straw. He thinks about it as he’s lying in bed. He stares up at the ceiling and tries to figure out how he can explain moments like this, why there’s an aching emptiness beside him on his mattress when she's not there.

He hashes it out with the Ersa-in-his-head. _Find your core,_  she snaps. _You’re flailing like a bad wheel_.

“I can’t do this,” he protests.

 _You’re walking there anyway,_ she reminds him. _No matter what you do, time doesn’t stop, so commit to a direction and_ go.

She’s right. She’s always right.

The reality is that he doesn’t want to have this conversation with Aloy, not least of which because of the weight it places on her. If he says anything and she declines, he’ll have to get over it. He’ll have to accept her decision, and steel to his bones, he _will,_  and then he’ll have to start the arduous process of quietly untangling the way he’s bound himself to her in his mind. His love for her has kept him straight. It’s kept him sober. It’s focused him in a way nothing else has, and although he’s starting to realize he can make it without this warmth in his chest, he doesn’t _want_ to. It keeps him fierce and lean. It gives him something to build his life around.

He _wants_ her to know. He wants her to understand how important she is, how she’s saved him without even trying. He wants her to know she’s so much more than a copy of an ancient tinker, something spat out of a machine and cast from the tribe that should have welcomed her in. She’s life and light. She’s the future he didn’t dare contemplate, and even if that future isn’t her - fire and spit, he _wants_ it to be her - that flame has already been kindled. It’s not something he can un-see.

He knows her, and more than that, he has no idea what this would mean to her. He doesn’t want to lay all this at her feet. She’s as subtle as an arrow to the chest, and he is _terrible_ with words, and there’s no way this won’t be a confusing, painful mess for them both.

Regardless, the longbow is infinitely more practical than any maudlin declaration. Glinthawks and Scrappers are still swarming the machine corpses, preventing humans from salvaging much-needed parts. Anyone who can fight is engaged in fending off the scavengers, and Aloy is _thrilled_ to have something to do. She sits on the ramparts and takes out eight machines in the space of fifteen minutes, and also pops three stitches that were very nearly healed.

It ends up being worse because she tries to hide it. “I didn’t want to worry you,” she protests, as Danna’s closing the wounds back up and washing away the blood.

Erend is just stupidly grateful for freeze rime. Her pupils are blown wide, but she's not screaming, and the frantic pressure of her body is just a phantom in his limbs. “It’s fine,” he manages. “It’s totally fine.”

“Don't lie,” she snaps.

They sulk at each other for the better part of the evening, but in the end, she edges upstairs to perch uncomfortably on the foot of the bed. “I know what this means to you.”

“You’re upright,” he says.

Her jaw works. “Are you going to dream about this?”

Fire and spit, he hopes not.

It’s nothing he has control over. He doesn’t control Aloy, and he definitely can’t control his subconscious. The nightmare that comes is tame by current standards, and utterly unrelated to the day’s events, but when he gasps awake, she’s curled away from him, her back pressed against his. It’s a firm, solid pressure, like her fist in his hair.

“You don’t have to do that,” he says.

“Don’t you dare say you’re used to it,” she mumbles.

“I could get used to _this,_ " Charming Oaf interjects, and she sleepily puts a sharp elbow in his ribs.

He doesn’t roll over. He doesn’t wrap himself around her and breathe in the warm musk of her skin. He’s his father’s son, and she can’t stay forever. Given the slightest encouragement, he will lose himself in the wild blaze of her hair and the copper ore of her eyes, and he will absolutely shatter like bad steel when she has to go.

 _I love you,_ he thinks. He repeats it over and over in his head, sending the thought to her like the steady warmth of the sun. _I love you, I love you, I love you_.

He wants to say it again. He wonders how she’d react. She’s only barely tethered to civilization, and he’s pretty sure it would hit her like a Watcher’s stunning blow. Even if she saw it coming, she’d be unprepared, and she’d flare like a Strider and run.

It’s not going to happen. It can’t. If she were anyone else, he’d court her. He’d bring her small, stupid presents, and be Charming Oaf all the time. If she were anyone else, he’d be satisfied with Charming Oaf, but she’s Aloy, and he thinks she’s probably the first person since Ersa to actually see him. Maybe the first person ever.

The problem that’s not actually a problem is that she’s in his space. The rooms are brighter and warmer in a way he’d never thought was possible, and it has nothing to do with the Meridian weather. She leaves to go gingerly shoot Glinthawks, and he goes to talk with his men, and he feels an invisible tether painfully stretching out until he’s back in her presence. She still maintains her nest on the couch downstairs, but in the small hours of the night, the seeping horror in his brain is interrupted by the weight of her back against his.

Almost two weeks passes, and finally, he rolls over. “Don't do this,” he whispers, every drop of his blood screaming in wild protest. The more he loves her, the more he tries to push her away, and it doesn’t make _sense_ , but somehow in his marrow, it _does._  “This is just my stupid brain. It's nothing.”

She turns to face him, and in the darkness, she’s more of a presence than anything visible. She doesn't even have to touch him to bind him harder than the earth’s own pull. “Maybe I want to,” she says quietly.

“It’s not your fault. It's not your thing to deal with.”

“That's not what I said,” she says.

“Everyone’s asking so much of you, I can’t-”

Impossibly, she presses her forehead against his. “Stop.”

His brain is suddenly roaring and blank.

“The whole reason I’m alive is to be a key,” Aloy says quietly. “Elisabet Sobek, Anointed of the Nora…”

 _You’re so much more than that_ , he thinks, and then with a flush that’s both mortifying and wildly liberating, he realizes he’s actually said it out loud.

She's silent awhile. “You’re the only person who thinks that.”

Charming Oaf elbows his way in. “I guarantee that’s not true. I’m sure Petra-”

She chuckles, and her breath is warm on his face. “I’m sure Petra, too.”

“You could be the queen of Free Heap.”

Aloy snorts. “We both know that throne is too small to share.”

He means to tell her he doesn’t deserve her time. He means to tell her exactly why she’s so much more than she thinks she is, and he means to tell her she’s light and heat and everything he didn’t think he needed until she’d burst into his life. He means to tell her all of these things, but her forehead is resting against his, and it’s so _perfect_ that he’s completely forgotten how to speak.

 

****

 

Erend is mostly on his feet, and that means he’s back with his men. The gash on his leg isn’t healing well, so he's still leaning on that rusting cane. “Might have been metalburn,” Danna finally pronounces, “but you’ve still got two legs, so at least there's that.”

Kip comes bouncing up one morning. “Cap! Tinker’s gonna make me a whole new _arm._  I’m thinking about putting a bolt shooter in it.”

“That’s...that’s great,” Erend says, but it’s the wrong thing to say, because the Vanguardsman’s face falls. “What? It’s good, right?”

“Know what Nyler would have said?” Kip says mournfully. “He would’ve said ‘Yeah, too bad they can’t make you a whole new _face._ ”

It’s true, and Nyler’s impudent absence has blown a huge hole in the Vanguard’s morale. So many are dead, the survivors desperately cheerful. As their captain, Erend needs to be the biggest and the best, the leader who bolsters them against the wild storm of their grief. “I wouldn’t say that, Kip,” he says seriously. “I like your face. Somebody around here has to make me look good.”

Kip breaks out in a huge grin.

 

****

 

Some things, though, Erend _really_ wishes he could quash.

He and Aloy are up in the watchtower at dusk, seated companionably across from each other. He’s drinking tea, a dark, smoky brew that he’s come to favor. He still _misses_ the acrid taste of alcohol, the way it burns through his chest and makes him light and free, but...he’s done with that. He had to be. If he has one drink, he’ll have ten drinks, and there is no middle ground.

He’s got his bad leg stretched out, but the ache is still a hard force against his bone. She has a bundle of ridgewood at her side; her hands move with a steady, practiced rhythm, slicing open the tip of each branch and slitting a shard firmly into place.

“You should know,” Aloy says out of nowhere, “that your men are running a betting pool on whether or not you’ve kissed me.”

Erend chokes on his own spit.

“Apparently, the odds are not in your favor,” she adds. “Kip offered me half his shards if I'd help him win.”

This is not happening. This cannot possibly be happening.

He's going to _kill_ them. Every single one of them.

“Really,” Erend manages in what is almost a normal tone. “If it's good money, you should consider it.”

“Your face right now,” she says, a bright flare of revelation amid the amusement. “You already _knew_ ”

Suddenly, he feels like he’s caught in the mouth of Sawtooth, desperately squirming to avoid the spinning blades. “Don’t listen to them,” he sputters, because he’s heard what those dirty bungs will say, and that’s only to his face, and if _she’s_ heard them _-_

Kip _offered-_

He can’t _believe_ -

But...she doesn’t look offended. She just cocks her head like a curious bird and bites at her lower lip, chewing on what is almost actually a smile.

“Your _face_ ” she repeats. “You actually like me.”

Damage control.

“I _do_ ,” he says quickly. “Like you, I mean. But it’s not - I don’t know what you’ve heard, and I can assure you-”

Her face goes utterly blank. It’s like a cloud has gone across the sun, the entire world turned to gray, and he scrambles to say something, anything, that will bring her back. “The men- the things they say- it’s not-” He’s babbling. This isn’t anywhere close to the speech in his head that's refused to come together. Fire and spit, he needs to bring himself under control. “It’s not for polite company,” he says lamely.

“Polite company.” She frowns. “What does that even mean?”

“It means…” He swallows. “Look, they see you, and they don’t _know_ you. They just know that you’re a pretty girl standing next to me, and they think- they don’t know you like I do. They don’t know who you are, and I could _never_ \- not when you’re-”

There’s a flash of anger he doesn’t expect, like the sudden, whining charge of a Watcher about to strike, and he opens his mouth to furiously backpedal-

“Not when I'm a filthy savage,” she says bitterly, and shoves herself to her feet, and _no_ , that’s the absolute _opposite_ of what he meant, and he’s going to _kill_ whoever is still spewing slag like that-

“Aloy. Aloy!” He lurches after her, pain stabbing up his bad leg. “Listen- just listen-”

“We’re done talking.”

“ _Please._ ”

That stops her, and after a moment’s hesitation, she turns around, her entire body an electric field charged and ready to arc. She crosses her arms and dares him to go on.

He might fry for this, but he’s already running headlong into it, and he can’t slow down. “Aloy...look. They look at you standing with me, and they see us fight together, and they _know_ your worth, they’ve seen your skill, and- they’re all romantic bungs. All of them, down to a man. They see the two of us, and they assume…”

“You’ve said,” she says flatly.

He huffs, because he’s saying this _so badly_ , and all he wants is for her to stop looking at him that way. He’d flirted with her before the Proving, because she’d been the prettiest girl he’d ever seen and devastatingly forthright in a way that made it hard to breathe, but now…now she’s the breath in his lungs, the marrow in his bones, and he can’t even begin to articulate that. He inhales slowly and tries to find his center, tries to find that fortress of calm that will make the words come out right, the words that will make her understand. “It’s not that simple,” he finally tries. “It’s...I’m not saying they’re wrong, but you...you deserve more than that. So much more.”

“ _Deserve_?” She throws up her hands. “Deserve, Erend? Deserve implies someone else is doing the choosing, and I choose for myself. You've _been_ my choice, idiot, but _agh,_  you're making me rethink!”

Now he's actually choking. He can't breathe-

“I thought you were the one person who didn't care,” Aloy says bitterly. “The _one person_ who didn’t care who I was or what I could do, but you keep being as bad as everyone else!”

“Wait. What?” He's not. Is he?

She affects an exaggerated swagger. “Poor little savage, ignorant little outcast.”

“I have _never_ said _-_ ”

“You don't have to!” Aloy snaps. “You mope around convinced I have no idea what you want. You're so sure you've got me figured out that you don't even bother to _ask_.”

“Hey, I didn't want to assume-”

“You're assuming everything!”

“Okay. Okay.” He's in so much trouble. If the ground would only open up and swallow him whole- “So maybe I did-”

“‘Maybe’?” she sneers. “You stand back and pretend you can't see, because it's easier than just _saying_ something. I'm not stupid, Erend. I thought you were just being slow to figure things out, but no: this whole time you've just been a huge _coward_ ”

“‘Figure things out’,” he echoes.

“We’ve been over this ground,” she snaps. “Over and over and over again. Do you honestly think I didn’t know? You were drunk the first time, and you didn’t mean it. Maybe you were sick last time. You do this _every_ time. What’s your excuse right now?”

“Excuse.” He doesn’t have an excuse. He’s just repeating words now, his mouth swollen with all the slag his brain wants to spew in his defense. “I didn’t-” _say something, idiot_ \- “I didn’t want to make your decision for you-”

“YOU WOULDN’T EVEN GIVE ME A DECISION TO MAKE!” Her shout echoes off the battlements, and they both go shocked and still. Across the wall, two Carja soldiers stop and look around before going back to their patrol.

“I like you, idiot,” she snaps. “You should have picked up on that by now.”

It hits him then that she’s absolutely right. He’s been assuming all this time she didn’t actually understand. It was one of the first things she’d ever said to him: _I grew up as an outcast, shunned by the tribe._  She’d grown up outside of a clan, out in the wild. She has only the barest skill for negotiation, no ability at all to finesse; he _knows_ the way she bludgeons her way through conversation. He’d assumed that meant she had no context, that she could track a rabbit and subdue a machine but she had no practice navigating how two people declare mutual intent. He’d flirted with her before the Proving, and again in Meridian, and a thousand times more between then and now because he can’t help it; he’d been too infatuated at first, and now he’s lost completely. He’s been martyring himself for _months_ at the thought she doesn’t understand his signals, but she’s been standing here all but tapping her foot the whole time. He’s the one who hasn’t understood, and that’s because he’s been wrapped too tightly inside himself to actually _see_.

He’s an idiot. He is _such_ an idiot.

Incompetent. _Stupid_. “I could have just…?” he says faintly.

“You’re so convinced you’re not worthy,” she hisses back. “You don’t think you’re worthy of being captain, and you don’t think you’re worthy of leading your men, and you don’t think you’re worthy of _me_. You crawl into a bottle like it’s a safe refuge and say it’s because you’re not good enough, but even when you clean yourself up, you  _still_ can't admit what you want."

“Aloy-”

“You didn’t even think to ask what I wanted. You thought I didn’t even _know_ what was going on. You just decided for me.” Her eyes glitter dangerously. “I do _not_ like being condescended to, Erend.”

It looks like that, it _does_ , but it’s not what he meant, and she’s not understanding-

“No,” she says coldly, heading off whatever stupid thing he’s about to say. She straightens up and adjusts the bow on her shoulder. “I’m going to bed.”

She stalks off, ripping his heart out as she goes. As he sinks back down to the stone, he thinks to himself that if she’d broken every bone in his body, he couldn’t possibly hurt more.

The worst part is that she’s absolutely _right_. He’s done this to himself, and he’s hurt _her_ in the process. He’s held her in his mind for months, and he’s never bothered to consider that she might want something in return. He’s been savoring the slow burn of unrequited love like he once savored his alcohol.

He’s still his father’s son, still an addict, still failing everyone around him.

Incompetent. Inconsiderate. Stupid.

 

****

 

He doesn’t console himself in drink. He doesn’t have to.

His leg hurts. His whole body hurts. The last time he’d unwrapped the wound, it had looked particularly angry, and he’d slathered on some foul-smelling healing salve and wrapped it back up.

He’s too tired to care.

There’s too much to do, so Erend keeps moving. Aloy’s avoiding him - no, that’s not true; he’s avoiding _her_ like the absolute child he is, finding excuses to be asleep or elsewhere when she’s in the apartment, and he prods at the vicious ache of the argument like a rotten tooth. It’s a good distraction from his leg; he’s limping hard, every step a blazing jolt of agony.

It doesn’t occur to him that he might actually in trouble until he sits down to go over the patrol assignments with Adar, and can’t get back up. Distantly, he hears Tandin blurt out, “I’ll find a healer,” and then everything fades to black.


	28. Chapter 28

“You,” Aloy growls, “are an idiot.”

He’s very aware of this, but he’s too tired and achy to face it right now, so he lets himself sink back into the cloying depths.

“Erend!” There’s a sharp tinge of alarmed command to her voice, like when she’s calling the position of an incoming Glinthawk, and it drags him back up to consciousness. “Don’t you _dare_ ,” she snaps.

He doesn’t feel like he has much of a choice, really. His body’s going to do what it’s going to do, and right now, it really, really, _really_ wants to sleep.

“Coward,” she hisses, and fire and spit, of course she’s putting her thumb on that particular bruise.

It would be so much easier to prove her right, but after all the slag he’s thrown, he _owes_ her, so he claws his way back to something vaguely approaching awake. “Go away,” he manages, because that’s a smart thing to say to the woman he loves.

“Drink this,” she says, ignoring him. “Either swallow it yourself, or I’m going to pour it down your throat.”

It’s a terrifying possibility, so he obediently slurps at the thick, bitter concoction she’s holding to his lips. It’s the worst thing he’s ever tasted - and given the amount of swill he’s willingly chugged, that’s not an insignificant statement - but the effort to puke feels insurmountable, so he just closes his mouth and tries to breathe through his nose.

“You’re _such_ an idiot,” she repeats, and then her hand is in his hair, her fingers gripping tight enough to hurt. She’s scowling down at him, and then he realizes she’s _worried_. “Forget your stupid leg; we could lose _you_ \- did you just not _think_?”

Stupid. Incompetent.

“I love you,” he says.

Aloy’s fist in his hair goes tighter, and thank the forge, it’s almost enough to distract from the pain everywhere else. “Erend Vanguardsman, don’t you _dare_.” She gives his head a sharp shake. “I came _back_ for you.”

There’s a cracking undertone to her voice, and the sudden ice in his blood has nothing to do with the fever. She thinks she’s going to lose him, and fire and spit, he _can’t_. He can’t face the enormity of what she’s saying, but he _has_ to face it, because that’s been the problem all along. She needs him to step up, to make his statement and let her consider.

He’s behaving the same way he did with Ersa. He let her do all the heavy lifting. He let her carry him and push him along when this whole time, he should have been carrying his own weight. He’s been such a _child_ , and he’s known that - he’s had enough people tell him that - but it hasn’t hit him until this very moment.

_You’re gonna have to grow up fast._

He’d thought he had it. He’d thought he was _better_ , but he keeps being wrong. It hits him over and over and over, the same way his father did. These things don’t _get_ better. He will never stop being his father’s son, and if he ever thinks he’s beyond that, it’s only because the poison’s roots have taken hold somewhere else.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Aloy, I’m so sorry.”

Aloy looks at him, pale and exasperated, and fire and spit, he can’t suppress the shudder at her touch. “This is what’s going to happen,” she says, low and firm, and he’s not sure what she can actually threaten him with at this point, but she is _definitely_ threatening. “You’re going to drink whatever we give you. You’re going to sleep. You’re going to burn this off, and when it’s over, we are going to talk.”

“Two minutes?” he says hopefully. He is such an addict. Alcohol, Aloy...there’s no difference in the way his body responds. The drive to overconsume is in his blood and he will never overcome it, but if he’s got to drown in something, he wants to drown in her. She’s furious and scared, and it’s all his fault, but she’s blazing above him, and he’s a moth that burns and burns and burns.  

“ _Idiot_ ,” she says.

“I think you’re beautiful,” he tries, because he’s slipping away and she needs to _know_. “All the time.”

“You could actually _say_ it,” she retorts, but her fingers are still in his hair, and it’s all he’s ever wanted.

 

****

 

The nightmares should be overwhelming, but what actually comes is so much worse: simple, quiet dreams about her walking away, walking and walking, and there’s nothing he can do to stop her. All he can see is the slow sway of knotted rope over Nora fur as she retreats into shadow, and he’s too paralyzed to shout.

It's worse than the day on the Spire, when he'd glanced over the edge of the butte and seen the ridge come crashing down. In this moment, everything is _his fault_ , and she's not coming back.

“Don't you dare,” Aloy repeats somewhere beyond his consciousness, but that's the problem: he never dared in the first place.

 

****

 

For the second time in a month, Erend somehow manages to have two legs. The antiseptic herbs packed into the wound are a blinding assault. Aloy prowls on the edges of the room, shoving cups of eye-watering, blistering concoctions at him until he can barely swallow past the burn in his throat.

“I’m very good at what I do,” Danna tells him severely, “but by the sun, this was sheer luck. You don’t get a third chance. No one does. Do you understand?”

Aloy’s sitting on the floor by the stairs, glowering.

He’s becoming very familiar with third chances. He doesn’t deserve _any_ chance, but the world keeps giving them to him, and he really, really needs to stop fucking them up.

 _No more playing around_.

 

****

 

The conversation hangs between them like heavy rock. It would be easier to avoid it, but it has to happen. They’re too far along this particular mineshaft to turn back now. There could be hidden ore or there could be nothing.

Erend doesn't think it's nothing, and he's _terrified._

He’s been thinking this whole time that he needs to compose a speech, but that assumes Aloy is just a passive receptacle for his slag. She's _not._  She's so much more. She's a blazing flame, and he's a small, stupid moth, buffeted by the currents that surround her.

He wonders how it happened between Avad and Ersa. His sister was as direct as Aloy. Knowing Ersa, she’d probably just grabbed Avad and-

Erend can’t do that.

The fever drops away. He sits up and he gets out of bed and he even manages to stagger around a bit.

He's sitting at the bottom of the stairs, puffing from the effort, when Aloy drops down next to him. “Don’t avoid me,” she says. “I don’t like it.”

“I don't like doing it,” he says honestly. There's a lot of things he doesn't like doing, but he keeps fucking _doing_ them.

“It doesn’t matter what your men say,” she says. “Not when you're the one tying yourself up in knots.”

He snorts. “They figured it out before I did.”

“Really?”

“Don’t tell me you’re surprised.” He looks down at his hands. “I’ve...missed a lot of things. I didn’t know how much I was drinking. That’s not an excuse,” he adds quickly. “It’s just...bare fact. And I’m working on it.”

“I know you are,” she says.

“The drinking,” he says. “You should know...it’s not going to go away. I keep running into that. I can be stone sober, and it’s always going to be there. It’s in my blood, and I’m gonna fall back. I’m not my father, but…” He makes himself say it. “I can’t promise I won’t be.”

Aloy is serious and steady. “I don’t think you will.”

He wonders if Ersa was afraid for him. He wonders if she’d seen him taking the same path, and if her ferocity in dragging him out of the bottle again and again was motivated in some part by fear of an inevitable repeat of the past. “I don’t think Ersa thought so either.”

Erend couldn't rely on Ersa for sobriety, and he can't rely on Aloy now. It's too heavy a weight, and he _hates_ it. He hates the way the need lurks beneath his skin, insidious and deceptive. He hates being drunk and he hates being sober, and most of all, he hates the effort it takes to maintain the hard line between the two. He hates that the last time Ersa saw him - the last time she'd _really_ seen him, the time before the day she'd died in his arms - he'd been at the tavern.

He's not where he wants to be. He's Erend, captain of the Vanguard, but he's also still his father's son, and he's trying very hard not to be the latter. More than anything, he wants Ersa to see him now. He's not perfect, and he's never going to be, but he desperately wants her to see that he's trying not to be the useless drunk he's been.

“Aloy, I’m sorry.” He takes a deep breath. “You’re absolutely right, and I’ve been a stupid bung about everything. I owe you an apology, and I owe you so much more than that, if you’ll let me.”

Aloy’s eyes flick across his face. She’s silent a long moment, and then says, “Pitchcliff.” He thinks he knows where this is going until she continues, and then he’s thrown entirely off his feet. “Going after that Stormbird was stupid,” she says, her voice disappearing into her throat, “but someone had to do it, and I...got careless.”

“You’re _never_ careless,” he interjects.

“I did get careless,” she snarls, and then the words pour out, furious and shaky. “My Focus kept losing it in the snow and I couldn’t see how much armor it had. I should have scouted. I should have waited. I _know_ better. I’m a better hunter than that. I should have stayed hidden, or I should have gone back, but Ersa had just…” She grits her teeth. “I wanted to _do_ something. I wanted something to go right.”

“Ersa wasn’t your fault,” he says fiercely, a howl of pain flaring in his chest. It was Dervahl. It was _Erend-_

“I could have gotten us there sooner!”

He remembers her staggering into the firelight, bloody and carrying three Bellowback hearts. He remembers her scouting ahead, and coming back with a single, terrifying report: _Corrupted_.

“I thought…” She curls in on herself, chewing around things she doesn’t want to say. “Rost,” she manages. “I wanted you not to-”

She wanted Erend not to lose someone he loved the way she had, but Ersa died anyway.

“And then you came after me,” she goes on, and then snaps, “Which was _also_ stupid, by the way.”

“Someone had to,” he says, because he’s an asshole.

“Rost,” she says, and it’s not a word. It’s not a name; it’s a raw croak of grief. “He was there, and then he- there was _never_ anyone else, Erend. There was never going to _be_ anyone else.” There was never anyone to save her. There was never anyone else to love her, to protect her. Anyone who might have tried was lost at the Proving. “Then _you_ were there,” she says, “and you made it sound so _obvious_ , and I just…”

“You left,” he says. “You left and didn’t even say goodbye.”

She doesn’t have an answer for that, but they both know he’d been passed out drunk. Even just thinking about it makes his skin crawl with shame. She’d been overwhelmed and he’d been mired in grief, and they’d both reacted the only way they knew how.

“What you said in Meridian,” she says. “You came after me, and then you said _that_.”

“I wasn’t wrong,” he points out.

“I helped you,” she says. “I helped and I left, and that should have been it.”

“No, it _shouldn’t_ have-”

“You _worried_ about me,” she says.

“Damn right.”

“ _Not_ damn right! It didn't make _sense,_  not when I couldn't help you with anything else. You had no reason-” Her jaw works. “I spend a lot of time alone. I’ve always spent time alone. Rost...I don’t expect anyone to have my back.”

He knows exactly what it costs her to admit that.

“I didn’t know until Brightmarket,” she goes on, “but you said you _worried._  Why should you? Some grimy outlander from the savage east - why bother?”

“You are so much more,” he says.

“You didn’t ask for anything. You just...were. And then I told you about Elida, and your _face_ -"

She’d seen it in his face, the moment of shock that still resonates in his bones. “ _I_  didn’t know,” he manages. “I didn’t know there were _words_. I thought it was just me. I didn’t know it was something other people could feel.”

“You could have _tried_ ,” she says desperately. “I thought you’d say something on the Spire. I _wanted_ you to say something.”

His head is spinning. “Why couldn’t _you_?”

“I’m Elisabet Sobek,” she snaps. “I’m the Anointed of the Nora. A whole _army_ was there in my name, Erend. They came for _me_. You said so yourself.”

“That doesn’t mean-”

Aloy throws up her arms. “Everything I say either becomes this huge political edict or some grand religious proclamation, and even if it weren’t, everyone wants me to be something I’m not. Avad all but asked me outright to replace Ersa-”

“He _what-?_ ”

“You’re the only one who doesn’t seem to care about all that,” she says. “You keep saying I’m a pretty girl from the middle of nowhere, and I hated that, Erend, I _hated_ it. I hated it until I was suddenly all these things to all these people.” Her entire body abruptly folds in on itself. “You know what I wanted? I wanted to know who my mother was. Do you know what being _motherless_ means to a Nora?”

_Oh._

He’s been so angry at the Nora for casting her out that he hasn’t ever thought _why_ , not really. He’d assumed her mother just wasn’t Nora, but to somehow not have a mother at all... For a tribe obsessed with matrilineage, being motherless would be the ultimate sin, and one that was absolutely always innocent. “Aloy…”

“I was six,” she says bleakly. “They were throwing rocks at me. Rost told me the only way I could find out was to win the Proving.”

“He didn’t know?”

She’s quiet a moment. “He was a good man. He followed the tribe’s laws. He wouldn’t have told me.” When she looks back at him, deep anger smolders under the damp gleam of tears. “So I ran the Proving, and I _won_ , but I didn’t even have time to breathe. The proctor proclaimed me a Brave, and then Eclipse-” She takes a deep breath. “Suddenly I’m running back and forth across the Sundom looking for some woman called Elisabet Sobek. In a fantastic turn of events, _I’m_ Elisabet Sobek and I’m the only one who can stop a rogue AI from destroying the entire world whether I want to or not. You know what I found out about my mother?” she demands. “I found out it’s _complicated_ , and I don’t even know if I’m _happy_ about what I found. I almost wish I still didn’t know.”

“You don’t mean that,” he says automatically, and Aloy sighs.

“I don’t,” she admits, because of course she doesn’t. She would have kept looking forever, a raging fire unable to stop consuming dry grassland. “Erend…”

“You already had so much going on,” he says. “I was a mess. I couldn’t put that on you.”

“I couldn’t have said anything,” she says. “I’m so much to everyone, and I was afraid if I said anything, you'd have felt pressured.”

The irony would be hilarious, if it weren’t slicing them both down to their marrow. “I’m saying it now,” Erend says. “I mean. Unless you don’t want me to. Then I’m not.”

Aloy shakes her head, stuffing a fist into her mouth against a brief laugh that is entirely nervous hysteria. “How is it that you're even more terrible at this than I am? At least I've got the whole outcast excuse.”

“Useless drunk?” he offers.

“That’s only something you tell yourself,” she retorts.

“Doesn’t make it fake,” he says.

“You’re sober.”

“Yeah,” he says. “And the world’s saved. You can do whatever you want.”

“It is.” She swallows. “Here we are.”

“Here we are,” he agrees.

The light in her eyes rises like the morning sun into something far more bright and hungry, and _oh_ , he wants that. He’s wanted it for so very, very long. There’s a long frozen moment where the energy just swirls between them. His mouth floods at the prospect of tasting her, and when she leans over to press her lips against his, fire and _spit_ , his entire body evanesces.

They’re kissing. This is actually happening. She’s here. She’s _here_ , the hot rush of her breath, the freckles on her cheeks like rising sparks, and then his hands are in her hair - in her _hair_ \- twining in amid the braids and beads, and she blazes brighter than anything he’s ever seen.

“Kip’s definitely giving you half his shards,” Charming Oaf breathes.

“Fuck the shards.”

Erend is boneless. His face is buried in the wild tangle of her hair, and she’s here, she’s _here_. He is so completely in love that there aren’t even words.

He’s not even a moth. He’s so far beyond. He’s free-floating heat, glowing and infinite.


	29. Chapter 29

When Aloy pulls back, she’s smugly pleased with herself. “That was nice.”

“Nice,” Erend echoes. Distantly, he’s impressed he’s even able to speak.

“Your face right now,” she says, and then leans in again.

Her lips are so much better than he’s ever imagined, and she's so much warmer and more solid than any sordid dream.

“Careful,” she says against his mouth. “This could become a habit.”

Oh yeah. It definitely could.

 

****

 

At some point, he says something inevitably stupid. “I don't know what to do after this,” he says. “I didn't expect to actually…”

She gives him a strange look. “I assume we keep living.”

“I don't know how.” He's suddenly terrified that this is it, the pinnacle of his entire life. He’s kissed her; he can’t hope for anything beyond this, because if he’s wrong, the fall will absolutely break him.

“Why do you say things like that?” she asks, annoyed. “Don’t make me out to be something I’m not.”

He has. He absolutely has. He’s clutched at the dream of her because he hasn’t had anything else. Now that she's in front of him, everything in his head seems...sterile. He wants the Aloy right here, messy and complicated. He wants the clumsy mash of their lips together, the jungle thunderstorm of her anger. He wants the way she bludgeons through conversations like a charging Broadhorn.

He has absolutely no idea how to say that.

“Training,” he tries. At her confused frown, he blunders on. “You didn't hit every target the first time you held a bow, right? I was a big kid, but I had to learn my axe. That's what I want. Maybe I've had...axes...on my brain, but that doesn't mean I know how to swing one.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You really know how to impress a girl.”

“So I've got a few straw dummies to hit.”

“Also terrible.” She shakes her head. “You think we'll actually figure this out?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I mean. Only if you, um. Want to go a few rounds.”

“There were these two people in Free Heap,” she says, apropos of nothing, but then it starts to make sense. “Long story short, they didn’t know they liked each other and…” she trails off, her face folding into a scowl that turns a delightful shade of pink around the edges. “Oh.”

“Seems familiar,” Charming Oaf points out.

“That’s not the point,” she snaps, and oh, the delightful pink crawls into her cheeks. “The _point_ was that once they figured it out-” once she’d bludgeoned them into figuring it out, he guesses - “they just _stood_ there and said the most ridiculous things, and I do _not_ want to do that.”

Charming Oaf has lived among Oseram his entire life and he knows _exactly_ what she’s talking about, and Erend tries very hard to swallow back the sly grin. “Hammering the anvil, mm?”

Aloy stabs a finger at him. “Don’t you _dare_ start.”

“Look,” he says. “I don’t know how to do this any more than you do. This is so far beyond anything I thought was possible, and...this is all uncharted ground. I’ve got no map.”

She’s a wanderer. A delver. She’s gone into places that haven’t been mapped in a thousand years, and somehow, she’s come back. “We just do it,” she says quietly. “Or we give up. Those are the two options, and...I don’t want to give up.”

Fire and spit, she slices him open every time. “I don’t either.”

“So.” She chews on the word like it’s sour. “Training.”

“Training,” he agrees.

 

****

 

They kiss.

It's more awkward than he's hoped, but less awkward than he's feared. She’s quick to offer a helping hand - she’d hefted him to his feet after the explosion that levelled Dervahl’s warehouse - but otherwise, Aloy doesn't touch anyone. In the cavern of his chest, Erend hoped that it was only a matter of breaking through, that if he could convince her he’s safe, her walls might start to come down. Instead, he’s realizing it’s as ingrained as his ability to take a hit.

He knows _exactly_ how hard this is going to be.

She’d been raised outcast, so her isolation isn’t a surprise. What Erend knows about Rost, her adoptive father, is tantalizingly scant, but he’s pretty sure he wasn’t the sort of man to be physically demonstrative. Consequently, touch is absolutely not part of Aloy’s vocabulary.

Erend wouldn’t normally say he’s someone who craves touch himself, but right now, he’s a an entire shipment of blaze ignited at once. He _desperately_ wants to touch her. He wants to spend days and weeks just kissing her. He wants to wrap himself up in the tangle of her hair, and he wants to lose all sense of space and time as he learns the contours of her mouth.

Instead, he breathes. He tries to make himself into a fortress with a solid and steady foundation. She came back to him, and she keeps coming back, so he clings to the hope that she’ll eventually find her way to the place he wants them to be.

Days pass. He limps around. He talks with his men. Tandin follows him around like an old mother until Erend finally snaps, but instead of backing down, the Vanguardsman just squares his shoulders. “Precedent, Cap,” Tandin says.

Fire and spit. He’s not _wrong_ , and that’s what rankles the most.

Aloy spends most of her time on the wall or perched somewhere outside the city, casually slinging arrows into the machines that come to claim salvage. She’s gaining strength faster than Erend is, and he tries very, very hard not to be annoyed about that. It isn’t a contest, but some deep, nagging part of him is terrified that once she’s confident in her health, she’ll disappear back into the wilderness and leave him behind.

Loving her means having to let her go. He keeps telling himself that, but then she’ll steel herself to abruptly cross the space between them, and then all he knows is her taste. He’s his father’s son, and even if he wanted to hold himself back, he’s already too far gone.

It’s happening slowly. He tries not to touch her until she touches him first. It’s little things: a casual brush between shoulders, the gradual tightening of personal space like trickling snowmelt coming together in the spring.  

They’re in his apartment. He’s down on the floor, his bad leg stretched out on the rug as he works oil into the stiff leather of his new gambeson. Aloy sits on the couch behind him, deftly cutting wire into the rolled loops she’ll use to make arrows. It’s a typical evening, calm and quiet and painfully domestic; Erend absolutely loves it. Later, he’ll go upstairs and she’ll retreat to her nest of blankets on the couch, and they’ll pretend it’s how they like it until she shakes him out of a nightmare and spends the rest of the night curled just out of reach.

He’s massaging out a particularly dry section when her hand drops onto his head. He’s not sure if it’s a warning or a signal for attention until her fingers gently slide into the thick brush of his hair, and draw a single tentative circle on his scalp.

This is _affection_.

He tries to keep breathing. He _really_ doesn’t want to scare her, but every single part of him is shrilling for her to _not stop_.

“I like your hair,” she says. “It...feels nice.”

“It likes you,” Charming Oaf says. “I could grow it out if you want.”

She snorts, and gives his head a final pat.

It’s such a small gesture, but it leaves him with a stupid grin for the rest of the night. Fire and spit, he is so in love.

 

****

 

He doesn’t drink. His leg hurts, but he’s working on that. He’s still embarrassingly weak, but he’s working on that. He’s got less muscle mass than he’d had when he was twelve, but...he’s working on that, too.

His men are slowly recovering themselves. Adar exchanges the splint on his arm for a simple sling, and Kip drives everyone crazy detailing the many possible functions of his as-of-yet unbuilt mechancial hand.

Erend is absolutely sure no one knows what’s developing between him and Aloy. If it’s a thing they knew about - and it’s definitely a thing, even though he has no idea what to call it, and is terrified of naming it anyway - his men would be insufferable. He’s heard mutterings meant to be out of earshot about shards and wagers, odds that seem to fluctuate daily.

He keeps his mouth shut, and the warm glow tucked safely inside his chest.

 

****

 

There’s one day that lasts too long, and he finally stops pretending. He’s absolutely exhausted and his leg hurts. She looks like she’s in about the same state, and he has no patience to keep up the pretense. “Will you just come to bed? It’s more comfortable than the couch, and we both know you’re coming up later anyway.”

She scowls.

“It’s sleep,” he says tiredly. “Nothing else. We’re not ready.”

“Don’t make decisions for me,” she snaps.

Right. “I’m not ready,” he admits. “...even if you are.”

He wants to be ready. She’s lived in his dreams for months, pale and splendid, but the Aloy in his head is vastly different from the Aloy right in front of him, and he’s absolutely terrified of getting this wrong.

She considers him. Most of the time, he can read her face like a map, but there are moments when she stares at him, as if she’s sussing out the inner workings of a machine, and he feels helpless in the face of her scrutiny. He has no idea what she’s thinking, and he has no option but to wait until she says whatever she’s going to say.

In the end, she doesn’t say anything at all. She follows him upstairs and silently lays down beside him, their bodies barely close enough to touch.

Yeah. That’s where he is too.

 

****

 

The nightmares don't stop, because of course they don't. He wakes up gasping like he always does, the phantom slick of her blood still clinging to his hands.

Aloy tugs on his shoulder in the darkness. “I'm right here,” she says.

“I _know_ ,” he manages. “I just…”

Aloy doesn't touch anyone, but she pulls his hands up to her face. “I'm right here,” she repeats.

Her hair surrounds them both, a dense, musky cloud. He wants to tell her he doesn't deserve this. He wants to say how much he loves her, but when he's tried, she ducks her head and squirms, so he doesn't.

Instead, he presses his lips against her forehead, breathing in the scent of her. She’s here. She’s warm. She’s alive. These are three facts to counter the horror in his brain, three facts he can cling to, and by the forge, he’s never letting go.


	30. Chapter 30

When the Sun King and the Sunhawk of the Lodge announce their engagement, the Carja explode. In a city still welding its edges back together, it’s the first gasp of air after weeks of suffocation. Erend stays as far away from Meridian politics as he possibly can, but as he walks his patrols, he hears nothing but excitement and praise for the union.

Talanah is not only the first woman to gain entrance to the Hunters Lodge, she’s the first Sunhawk, and whatever reservations some nobles may still nurse, Khan Padish is one of the oldest and most respected houses. Talanah herself is far from shy, and in the weeks following the battle against the end of the world, she’s made herself very visible in the effort to rebuild. The bandages have come off her metalburn wounds, and the knotted scar tissue crawls up her neck, pink and raw. It stretches over her forehead and cheek like a poison shadow, but she carries it with the pride and poise of a crown.

It would have been a suitable match based on bloodline alone, but Talanah and Avad’s individual strengths come together like a perfect alloy, and the entire city knows it.

“Congratulations,” Erend says to his king.

“This is good for our city,” Avad says.

Erend wonders what Ersa would think.

“I asked her once, if she’d even consider it,” Avad says, as if reading Erend’s mind. “She didn't speak to me for three days. It was the biggest fight we ever had.”

Erend snorts. “That’s saying something.”

“She told me we’d come too far to throw away our victory.” He hesitates. “She knew what we had would have to end. The nobility would never accept an Oseram consort, and she would not have taken me away from my queen.”

Ersa took Erend and cut ties with their clan. She left the Claim and never looked back. Erend can take a hit, and Ersa cut away anything she absolutely couldn't live without. She was brutal in doing what needed to be done, but she’d started her relationship with Avad knowing full well it couldn’t last, and she’d stayed with him until she died.

Erend suddenly feels both too hot and too cold.

“Talanah knows?” He thinks she does. He has a vague memory of a conversation at the Spire, but everything at the Spire is a dense haze. Trying to remember makes his heart pound and his throat start to close.

“A noble engagement is more negotiation than courtship,” Avad says. “Disclosures were made on both sides.”

Oh. He probably knows about that drunk, awkward night with Talanah, and if he doesn't, Erend is definitely not going to tell him. “You like her, though.”

Avad smiles. “It’s a rare thing for a royal marriage to start with affection. We are very lucky.”

Erend misses Ersa. He _misses_ her. It’s been eighteen months since the false body was brought back to Meridian, and even though it wasn’t her, the image lingers. The unspeakable mess of bone and brain that wasn’t hers, and actual Ersa, bruised and bloody but unbroken. His sister only died once, but Erend saw her murdered twice, and the echoes still resonate in his chest.

He dreams about Aloy too, but when she wakes him up, she’s warm and alive and breathing. Ersa is gone, and there’s nothing anyone can do to help his grief.

He wants to hate Avad. He wants to rail against this marriage, about how Ersa is being betrayed and her sacrifice dishonored, but he can’t. Instead, Erend lays down next to Aloy at night, and in the darkness, her fingers brush against his.

 _No more playing around_.

The person he used to be died with Ersa.  Time moves forward and can’t be unwound, regardless of the casualties along the way. It shouldn’t have taken Ersa dying to knock the slag from his bones, but here he is.

He’s not sure if she’d be pissed about that or not.

 

****

 

Aloy is on the hunt for armor.

She’s got the plain Nora leathers she wore across the bridge, but nothing affording more protection. Avad would gladly pay for whatever she needs - and so would Erend, if he had enough funds - but she’ll die before she asks. She’s gotten a few handsful of shards from machine scavengers she’s shot, and there isn’t anything anyone can say to help out.

He’s not exactly sure what she’s looking for, but she’s talked to every Carja merchant in the city and come away scowling.

“Your armor," he says, and makes a small gesture with his fingers. “The...sparkly one.”

“Completely fried,” she grimaces. “It’s the only reason I didn’t die at the ridge. I tried to salvage it when I was at the Nora camp, but it’s gone.”

“You could delve,” he says. “The parts-”

“It was a prototype,” she says. “My Focus couldn’t make sense of the design. Even if I could find the parts, I wouldn’t know how to put them together.”

“Could always get new arrow-breaker,” he points out.

She snorts. “That was good when the enemy was coming straight at me.”

“You looked good in it.”

“You think I look good in anything,” she says smugly, and fire and spit, she’s not wrong.

He grins. “As long as you know it.”

Aloy considers him, her face going suddenly serious. “It doesn’t bother you to be seen with me?”

“What are you talking about?”

“It's not going to hurt you doing your job, being seen with me.”

“You already know what I think,” he points out. “Besides, everyone’s seen you with me for weeks.”

She growls. “You know exactly what I'm talking about.”

“Since when do you care what people think?”

“I care a lot if it's hurting _you."_

Fire and spit. If she’s chewing on this because someone said something, he’s prepared to deliver the slowest, most painful death his tribe has ever dealt. “First of all, you saved the city. You're a huge hero, in case you haven't noticed. Second, I'm Oseram. Half of the Carja are pissed I didn't kill Dervahl where he stood, and the other half think I'm a loud, dumb drunk. Which,” he admits, “is not entirely undeserved. But I don't care about any of those things. You _know_ that. You want me to stand in the middle of the market and yell I LOVE ALOY? I'll do it all damn day.”

She rolls her eyes. “Oh yeah, that’ll definitely help.”

“Aloy.” He takes her head in his hands, sinking his fingers in the wild blaze of her hair, and she _almost_ doesn’t squirm away. “Are _you_ worried about this?”

He can think of a thousand reasons why she shouldn’t be here, why she shouldn’t sleep next to him or even pay attention to him at all.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she says quietly. “I just...wanted to check.”

“If anyone says anything, I can hit them,” he offers. “I’m good at hitting things. And,” he adds, in case the words _filthy_ and _savage_ have been uttered in her presence, “for the record, you smell amazing.”

A bright flush of pink abruptly swallows her freckles, and _oh_ , he likes that. It’s _adorable._  She bites the inside of her cheek, trying not to grin. He kisses her nose because he’s right there anyway, and stands back, utterly satisfied with himself.

There’s a comfortable moment of pleasantly bashful silence, and then Charming Oaf grins. “You said I’m with you.”

“You _are_ with me,” she retorts. “We’re sitting here together. That’s how ‘with’ works.”

“Yeah, but you mean ‘with’ like _with._ ”

The pink spreads even further, and she tries to disguise it with a scowl. “Idiot.”

She still lets him steal a kiss when he leans over. He can’t believe he’s sitting here _with_ this fierce, prickly woman, but fire and spit, he is so in love.

 

****

 

In retrospect, they’ve lasted much longer than he would have predicted. His men aren’t stupid, and they’ve been watching him with intense scrutiny for _months_.

It’s a small moment, and Erend just doesn’t think.

There’s a herd of Chargers that have taken up residence just beyond the northern bridge. Normally, it wouldn’t be difficult for the Carja garrison to chase off, but reports indicate that in addition to the usual pair of Watchers, there’s also a Ravager, and that _is_ a problem.

Aloy immediately volunteers. Of course she does.

He’s sending three of his men with the garrison party, mostly because it’s Aloy, and he remembers very vividly how helpful the Carja were in Brightmarket; the only reason Erend’s not going himself is because he’s missing a chunk of his calf and still limping hard.

He walks with his men to the gate. She’s standing there waiting, and fire and spit, she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. She’s made herself some armor that’s an unsettling amalgamation of Nora-style leather, machine plates, and undyed Carja linen, and her hair flares bright and wild in the breeze. She’s got her bow slung across her chest, a belt full of potions, and an impatient look on her face.

He loves her. He loves her _so much._

“Gentlemen,” she says to her escort. It’s very clear she doesn’t want them tagging along, but here they are, and she hasn’t had time to sneak away on her own.

“It’s _terrible_ having someone to watch your back,” Erend drawls.

The look she gives him could melt steel.

“Be careful,” he adds. He can’t tell her to be back by nightfall, because she’ll be gone exactly as long as she wants to be, and that’s not for him to decide.

He shouldn’t call the other side of the bed hers, but it _is,_ and if she's not in it, he may actually die.

She opens her mouth, her eyes sparkling with some sarcastic retort, but then reconsiders. “I will,” she says seriously.

It’s not something he thinks about. He moves when she does, and he kisses her because he loves her. He buries his fingers in her hair and inhales the scent of her, and he thinks _I love you, I love you, I love you,_  because she’s uncomfortable when he says it, but maybe she’ll absorb the thought anyway.

He doesn’t realize they have an audience until he’s suddenly aware of the sheer absence of sound.

Fire and spit. Fire and _spit_.

The Carja blink and shrug, and to their credit, the assembled Vanguardsmen say nothing. They are, in fact, very studiously regarding the sky.

“Oops,” Aloy mutters, and then winks at him as she walks away.

He’s not entirely convinced she didn’t plan the whole thing, and frankly, he's too dazed by the taste of her on his lips to care.

 

****

 

Erend’s resigned to be well and thoroughly ribbed the moment he goes back to the Vanguard command post, but no one says _anything._  The men he’d come back from the gate with are utterly silent.

It stays that way for hours. There’s a shift change. Men come in. Men go out.

Still nothing. He’s going to lose his _mind._

It’s almost nightfall when the tension finally breaks.

“Gold,” Kip says idly, leaning against the wall and contemplating his bandaged stump. “I’m gonna plate my hand with gold.”

“You can afford it now,” grumbles Garvehl.

“Thanks to the captain,” Kip grins, and there. It’s out in the open.

“Happy now?” Erend asks.

“About damn time,” mutters Adar, of all people.

“Are we talking about this?” Tandin says. “Is this a thing we all know about now?”

“ _Finally_ ,” Kip moans.

“Wait,” Erend says. “You knew?”

“You thought we _didn’t_? I thought I’d have to keep my mouth shut _forever_.” Tandin shoots a pained look at his comrades. “I want a new betting pool.”

“ _Proof_ of kissing,” Kip says smugly. “That was the wager.”

“They’re _living_ together,” Tandin points out. “How is that not proof?”

“The dumb grin on his face-”

“He thought we didn’t know.”

“Should’ve had a pool on _oblivious_.”

“Been going on long, Cap?” Kip asks, the very picture of innocence.

Erend frowns, trying to will away the blood rushing to his ears. “Doesn’t concern you.”

There’s scattered grumbling, and shards are passed. Fire and spit, how many bets _are_ there?

“Oh, we’re plenty concerned,” Tandin says. “Lots of concern right here. _Intense_ concern.”

He can’t kill them. “You’re all heart.”

If nothing else, the mood in the barracks is significantly lifted, particularly when Kip takes his bag of shards and announces that drinks are on him. “Except you, Cap,” he adds. “No drinks for you.”

“I didn’t need any fun anyway,” Erend says.

“Oh, you’re having _plenty_ of fun,” Kip reminds him, and _damn_ it, Erend’s gone as red as a kid half his age.

“Latrine duty. All of you,” he tries, but they’re already cackling their way to the tavern.

 

****

 

Erend absolutely doesn’t lurk at the gates for the rest of the evening. He’s just...patrolling. In a small, specific area.

He also definitely doesn’t go to jelly with relief when the team finally returns, victorious and unharmed. Aloy’s carrying an impressive pile of machine plates, and she nods at him in greeting. He nods back because he can't actually speak, and takes half the load.

They walk to the apartment.

“I’m fine,” she says, when he closes the door behind them.

“I know that.” It would be more convincing if his voice didn’t collapse in on itself.

“Look,” she says, taking all the plates and depositing them on the couch in a heap. She takes his hands and _pats herself down with them_. “No blood. Seriously.”

His brain is sparking like a downed Grazer.

“Idiot,” Aloy says fondly, and darts in for a feather-light kiss.

 

****

 

The habit has been that if they’re in bed, she doesn’t touch him until the nightmares start. Tonight, she edges closer, propping herself up on one elbow. “You’re really worried,” she says, frowning.

“I know you can handle it.” He _does_ know that. He knows it in his bones, but he also knows how many times she’s come back bleeding, and how many times she’s died in his sleep, and the contradiction shreds him.

“You’re still dreaming.” This, quietly.

“You can’t help me on that,” he says. He’d thought just seeing her alive and well would chase the demons from his brain, but she’s _here_ , and she’s still shaking him awake.

He shouldn't have told her. He can't deny that it's happening, but he should have just admitted to the ones involving Ersa and nothing else. It's too much to put on Aloy, and he can't stand how _sad_ she looks right now.

“Is that why you were drinking?” she asks.

He doesn't remember what he dreamed before he started going to bed drunk. He doesn't remember when going to bed drunk even started.

“That was way before you,” he says. “You make me want to be sober.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“You looked good today,” he offers. “With the plates and the arrows.”

“It was good to be back out there,” she admits. “The city’s so _loud._ ”

Aloy doesn’t belong here. She never has. “You don’t have to stay,” he says. “You’re up and walking. You can go wherever you want.

She snorts. “I know that.”

“I mean it,” Erend tells her. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I know that. You shouldn’t let me hold you here.”

“Don’t tell me what I should do.”

“Right.” Fire and spit. “What I meant was you should go if you want.”

“You’ve only said that a hundred times,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I know exactly what I can do.”

“You’re not staying because of the dreams, are you?”

“No,” she says quietly. “This city is loud and too full of people, but...it’s a change. I was in Mother’s Heart for one night. I’ve never stayed anywhere this long.” She leans forward. “And I like you, you idiot. It’s nice being wanted.”

Oh. He _definitely_ wants. “I love you,” he says, because her breath is warm on his face and her hair is falling around him in a cloud of fire, and there’s nothing else he can possibly say.

“You keep saying that, and I might start to believe you,” she says, but then her mouth is on his, hot and urgent, and any retort dies in his throat.


	31. Chapter 31

Whatever else is going on, he keeps kissing Aloy.

Erend hasn’t felt this loose and free in years. He remembers his first kiss - an Oseram girl at some raucous celebration, and he’d been young enough and drunk enough that he’d been too focused on touching her to recall her name - and this is nothing like that. With the barmaids, he’s rushed to get them into bed, and then out again. With Aloy, all he wants to do is spends his hours lying next to her, the sweet taste of her mouth in his.

He feels like everyone knows. He feels like he’s wearing the joy of her like he’s wearing his armor, bright and gleaming and pure.

Life intervenes, because of course it does. There are machines to master and a city that’s still rebuilding. A single merchant comes from the east with news from the Embrace. The Nora have unequivocally closed their gates to outsiders, but there are outcasts still willing to trade.

He comes back from his usual patrol to find her sitting on the floor amid a pile of fur and leather. She’s got a bone needle between her teeth and a pile of vine-colored rope in her lap, and she’s deftly weaving a familiar knotted skirt with great pleasure.

Erend doesn’t have the vocabulary to explain the sudden, fierce ache in his chest, or how his heart catches in his throat. “That...looks good.”

She _glows_.

 

****

 

Out of nowhere, the Shadow Carja collapse.

It’s not entirely unexpected, with Helis, Bahavas and the rest of the leadership dead and Itamen and Nasadi safely back in Meridian, but one day, Erend wakes up and the civil war is over.

“Ceasefire?” he asks Avad.

“Surrender,” Marad corrects. “The people are starving. There’s no way they could have held out much longer.”

“No one won,” Avad says quietly. “Not when it’s our own dying on both sides.” He looks at Erend. “If you can, I’d like to send you and a few of your men with my envoy.”

It’s only a few hours to Brightmarket, and then a short boat ride across the Daybrink to the Branded Shore. It’s the stretch between Blazon Arch and Sunfall that’s always been the most treacherous, even before the Derangement. It’s a hard two days through rough desert and scrub, and Erend is absolutely sure it’s more than he can handle.

He’s also very aware that Aloy had come from Sunfall with an impossible story of Rockbreakers and Corrupted Thunderjaws, and metalburn eating through her leg. Fire and spit, he can’t send anyone else in his place.

_Your king needs you._

“Consider it done,” he says, because he’s an idiot.

 

****

 

He is a _huge_ idiot.

Staggering through his patrols is one thing. Three days’ hard travel is definitely another, and by the time they get to Brightmarket, Erend is absolutely sure he’s going to live at Sunfall forever, provided he even makes it that far.

Maybe there will be another Thunderjaw. He’d almost rather get eaten at this point.

He also really hates Brightmarket. The smell of the water, the noise coming off the wharf - it all triggers a bubbling panic he can’t quite swallow back. Luckily, they don’t stay long. The barge is waiting, and they all crowd on.

Aloy is at his shoulder. She’s wearing an assortment of Carja silks and machine plate, having muttered something about not being conspicuously Nora in Sunfall. The Eclipse aren’t entirely gone and the last time she’d been there, she’d broken out of the Sun Ring. Even if she hadn't done all she's done, Erend can’t imagine how they could possibly miss her: her hair is a blaze of light in the sun, and the silk exposes her skin in a way he _absolutely_ can't ignore.  

“You look terrible,” Aloy murmurs at his shoulder. Her eyes flick over him sharply.

“You thought I looked fine,” he retorts. “What happened to that?”

She raises an eyebrow, her jaw going hard.

“...I may actually die,” he admits. “But I need to do this.”

She frowns.

“You can either help me or kill me,” he says. “We both know I need to be here.”

“ _Do_ we know that?” But she still slips her hand into one of the pouches at her waist and pulls out a small vial. “You could have said no.”

“You were going,” he points out.

“You keep telling me I can leave if I want to.”

“Never said I wouldn’t follow.” He takes a small sip. It’s ember, peppery and bright; it’ll take the edge off the pain, but not by much.

“Idiot,” she mutters, but her hand slips around his elbow.

“I love you,” he says, because fire and spit, he _does_.

The delightful pink he loves so much creeps into her ears. “Just don’t fall over.”

 

****

 

There’s a garrison at Blazon Arch of what were formerly Shadow Carja. Now, they’re just hungry and tired. Two years of war and three years of cease-fire have made them wary, but the Carja from Meridian greet them with a quiet sympathy Erend hadn’t thought any Carja could display.

He is suddenly very, very glad the war is over, and very, very glad he’s here to witness this.

There’s still a bit of light left in the day, but spending the night in Blazon Arch is a better idea than trying to push for the camp just beyond the Tallneck site. “It was bad the last time I went through,” Aloy says. “Watchers swarming, at least two Longlegs, and every time I turned around, there was another Ravager.”

He thinks of the healer gently prodding half-healed bullet wounds. “Sounds like a treat even in the daytime.”

Blazon Arch used to be a thriving town, the northern twin to Brightmarket, but since the war, its economy has withered. Now, there’s almost no one left, just a ring of empty stone buildings carved into the cliffs around the wharf.

The soldiers mostly stay up swapping stories around the fire, all starving to hear news. They ask about family on the other side; some of the Carja from Meridian grew up on this side of the Daybrink, and some of the Blazon Arch garrison are from the south.

Erend wonders what it would have been like to fight against Ersa. He supposes in a way, they did fight their kin - he’s fighting his own blood, even now - but it wasn’t like this.

Aloy picks an empty house and all but drags him inside. Adar and Tandin stayed back in Meridian; his second for this trip is Garvehl, and the Vanguardsman glances his direction without comment. Erend must look pretty bad if no one’s cracking a ribald joke.

The bed is empty and covered in dust. When he drops onto the mattress, it drifts up around him in the lamplight, tiny motes dancing like sparks. “You should at least take your boots off,” Aloy says.

“Staying prepared,” he mumbles into the dust.

She puts her hands on her hips, and he’s expecting a smart retort that he absolutely deserves, but it never comes. Instead, she chews on her lip, and then settles down next to him.

Her fingers comb through his hair. “Don’t make me worry about you,” she says quietly.

“Don’t worry about me,” he says. “Kiss me instead.”

She’s getting less tentative, and every time they touch, anything else in his brain dissolves into glowing coals. He _hurts,_ but they’ve been skirting the edge between sweet and something much warmer for days, and she is a very, very welcome distraction.

“I love you,” he breathes.

Her face is soft in the glimmering lamplight, copper green and copper gold melting together in her eyes. “I need you to take care of yourself.”

“You make me want to,” he tells her, and then her mouth is against his. His hand moves from her back to her hip, one finger daring to brush against the parts of her that this damn silk doesn’t cover, and he’s waiting for her to push him back, but she doesn’t. She just sinks her fingers deeper into the hair at his jaw and pulls him closer.

Fire and spit, she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and she makes his blood roar like a forge.

 

****

 

In the morning, Erend regrets everything.

He’s so sore he almost can’t move, and when he finally manages to get his feet on the floor, he almost pitches onto his face.

“I’m moving to Sunfall,” he groans. “Once we get there, I’m gonna sit down on the steps and never get back up.”

“We can still go back to Meridian,” she says, but she hands him the vial of ember anyway.

Once they start up the road, it gets easier. His leg is healing well, but it still fucking _hurts_ , and the ache radiates up through his back and his shoulders. He didn’t even know those muscles were _connected_ , but it turns out everything is connected. If nothing else, the movement just rearranges the pain, and that's better than nothing. 

He’s missing a chunk of his body. It’s not going to grow back, so he’s going to have to get used to this. He knows muscle. He knows it can be trained.

He just has to figure out which muscles need training, and which ones he’d cut out, too.

The road is far enough away from the Tallneck circuit that it doesn’t quite draw the attention of the beasts lurking in the giant machine’s path.

Well. Quite.

“Stay here.” Aloy pushes the nearest soldier down, and while the Carja don’t quite understand, the Vanguard definitely does, and Erend and his men drag the others into cover.

He’s an idiot, so he risks death to peer over the dune. Aloy creeps away and disappears into a sparse patch of tall grass. He can’t see what happens next, but all of a sudden, one of the Watchers whirrs into full alert and dives after its fellows. It creates a huge commotion, and the Ravager that had started in the party’s direction instantly dives in to execute the hapless decoy.

“Now,” Aloy hisses, appearing back amid them like a Stalker, and almost giving him a heart attack in the process. “ _Move_.”

Somehow, they pass the Tallneck circuit unscathed, but over the next dune is a trio of Scrappers. They flare immediately, and almost before he knows what’s going on, he’s swinging his axe. It’s a lucky blow, and the machine goes down in a shower of sparks. Aloy scores a perfect hit on the second one, and then the third - _oh_ , here they go. He knocks a chunk of plate from the Scrapper’s side, and in less than a heartbeat, she’s nocked another arrow and sent it straight into the beast’s core.

He turns to look at her, and she’s not even breathing hard. The sun is behind her and it catches in her hair like a perfect inferno, a bright, blazing crown. The garish Carja silks are dull rags compared to her hair. She’s life and heat and she’s gorgeously, wildly fierce.

Fire and spit, he loves her. He loves her _so much_.

She sucks her cheek to hide a grin. “Your face right now.”

“ _You_ ,” he breathes, because he can’t even begin to pretend he’s not utterly besotted, and then she does laugh.

“Idiot,” she says fondly. “Let’s get back on the road.”

 

****

 

They make it to the second camp a few hours before sunset. There’s an Oseram trader and his assistant already there; they’re on their way back from Sunfall, and they report a particularly belligerent herd of Broadheads about an hour up the road.

Between that and the waning daylight, it’s prudent to stay at the camp for the night. The Meridian envoy, an older sun-priest of significant noble blood, goes to make his devotions to the sunset, but the rest of the party immediately beds down.

Aloy checks the tension on her bowstring. “Is there a threat?” one of the Carja asks.

“Just going to scout,” she says, and then, more to Erend than to anyone else, “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

Every time she leaves, there’s long moment when Erend is absolutely sure she’s not coming back. He desperately wants to follow, but she’s faster alone, and as soon as he sits down, his entire body becomes one huge cramp. He takes the first watch, digging his fingers into his calf as he stares into the desert.

Well after nightfall, she comes back exactly like she’d said she would. The camp is quiet, a couple of the Carja engaged in deep conversation with the trader’s assistant by the fire.

“Anything?” Erend asks.

“Broadheads,” she confirms, dropping beside him to oil her bow. “I took down two and scared the rest off. They might not be back tomorrow, but we’ll see.”

He leans over and tugs her head down to kiss her temple. There’s propriety to maintain, but...everyone is mostly asleep or not looking their direction, and she smells _amazing_.

“How are you?” she asks quietly.

“I’m alright.” He’s had some ember. He’s fighting very hard not to down the entire bottle, but the howl to consume is a strong distraction from the hundred different ways his body aches.

He’s his father’s son, but maybe the howl is just another muscle. If he trains it like he trains anything else, someday it might not be such a struggle.

 

****

 

They make it to Sunfall. They don't get eaten by machines, and Erend somehow doesn’t die.

He’s never actually been here, so he has no idea what to expect. It’s as blisteringly hot as he’s been told, and the towers of the summer palace rise out of the heat thick and bright. Avad had mentioned once that Sunfall used to be a center of art and pageantry; now, the city is a hollow echo of Meridian’s glory, the stone walls crumbling amid a wide ring of makeshift hovels.

“Refugees,” Aloy murmurs at his side. “There’s no other space for them to stay.”

It feels like a punch to the gut. These people don’t look like fallen nobles. He’d known Jiran’s loyalists had fled to Sunfall, but he hadn’t known that those loyalists included so many farmers and artisans.

Well. Maybe he’d known, but he’d been too drunk to care.

It’s a hard walk through the slums and into the city. His bad leg is screaming, and it takes everything he has not to visibly limp. The people are openly hostile; right now is when Erend needs to be at his biggest, scariest best, and he absolutely cannot show any hint of weakness. Aloy disappears as soon as they hit the city gates, and he and his men form a protective phalanx around the sun-priest. It’s an entirely different atmosphere from the overtures at the Embrace. These Carja are more than just angry; they’re desperate and starving, and that makes them all the more dangerous.

The garrison at the palace is far more resentful than the one at Blazon Arch, and they maintain a frosty silence as the sun-priest calmly reads Avad’s proclamation. It’s particularly well-composed, Erend thinks, a good mix of strength and reconciliation, but the citizens of Sunfall seem anything but surrendered. They spit insults and expletives, and there’s very nearly a riot until the garrison commander steps in. “We have no choice,” he tells the crowd. “The usurpers have taken the King in Shadow, and so they have taken us.”

It’s not exactly a calming speech.

Still, the sun-priest and his escort are given rooms. The Vanguard immediately sets up a defensive watch, and the Carja from Meridian station themselves at strategic points.

“We should leave at first light,” Erend tells his men. Avad has planned a larger occupying force, bemoaning the need to occupy a city in his own Sundom, but the envoy needed to depart immediately. At best, the additional soldiers are a day behind them.

Erend has two Vanguardsmen and seven Carja. He’s not confident Sunfall’s volatility won’t break into outright violence, and even if he counts Aloy, it will be a hard, painful fight. He’s brute force and solid muscle, but he’s nowhere near peak condition and he’s not so naive that he doesn’t know exactly how this could end.

Toward the end of the afternoon, the sun-priest comes out of the apartment. “I’m going to the temple,” he says.

“That’s not a good idea,” Erend says. “The crowd earlier-”

“We are all Carja. I will not come to any harm.”

There’s a lengthy argument. Erend and his men have been charged with the priest’s safety, but the Vanguard is a very conspicuous reminder of Avad’s push to reclaim both Meridian and his throne. “If you come with me,” the priest points out, “I will be in greater danger. Let me walk among them.” He looks to the Carja guards. “I consent to one escort, no more.”

“We’ll follow-”

“You will not. Your presence tells them they are conquered. Mine reminds them we are all follow the same sun.”

Erend isn’t at all sure what Avad would say, but he’s the captain, and in the end, the priest goes alone, two of the Carja from Meridian following at a respectful distance

“Is this a mistake?” Garvehl asks.

He shakes his head. “By the forge, I hope not.”


	32. Chapter 32

He doesn’t expect it to work, but it _does_. Erend stays at the palace with his men, and towards evening, one of the priest’s guards come back to make his report. “It was tense,” the soldier admits, “but everyone’s calmed down considerably. He thinks we should stay.”

“We’ll see how it is in the morning,” Erend says. He avoids politics as best he can, but he can easily imagine the uproar a murdered sun-priest would cause in Meridian. It wouldn’t even be a war; Meridian forces would take Sunfall and there would be nothing left. Everything Avad and Ersa worked so hard to accomplish would be incinerated as quickly as dry tinder in the hottest forge.

The priest doesn’t come back. Erend’s entire body is cramped with exertion and anxiety, but he doesn’t dare blunt his reflexes - such as they are - with ember. The Carja take shifts, one or two going out to casually patrol and then report back.

“Everything is still fine,” the third patrol says. “He’s been walking around all night, just talking. He’s got a significant crowd, but they’re controlling themselves.”

This is probably exactly why Avad sent this particular sun-priest: calm, older, and from a family that was evenly split during the war.

The next day, things are still tense, but there doesn’t seem to be an immediate threat of impending violence. The priest has pulled a heroic all-nighter, still doing the work Avad sent him here to do when the sun starts to rise.

The Vanguard is more or less trapped in the palace. If they come out, they’ll exacerbate the situation and any inroads the priest have made will evaporate in a second. The Sunfall Carja guards periodically come by to check the apartment and account for Erend and his men. There’s a lot of sitting around, staying ready for imminent retaliation but at the same time trying to maintain an air of laconic unconcern.

Erend mostly works oil into his gambeson. Between its newness and the drying sand, it’s still not as supple as he needs it to be, and the stiffness of the leather compounds the stiffness of his limbs.

He knows muscle, and despite everything, he can feel himself slowly getting better. He still hurts like hell, but he’s figuring out how to work around the weakness in his bad leg. The walk from Meridian was an incredibly stupid thing to even attempt, but he didn’t die, and he’s learned a few important things in the process.

He doesn’t know where Aloy has gone. He tries to tell himself she’s hiding somewhere, or off hunting. He’s balanced on the edge of action, and when he sleeps, it’s a series of quick naps; there’s no room for quiet affection, but he’d settle for just being in her presence. He’s doing his duty his king, but he _misses_ her.

The moth is growing accustomed to the flame, and the absence of its heat makes him crawl in his skin.

Avad’s larger force arrives on the third day. They’re military, but their weapon are sheathed and they bring with them a long convoy of carts with food and supplies. Erend knows full well that Meridian is still recovering from the battle at the Spire, and these supplies aren’t surplus: this is a huge gesture, and the sun-priest is joined by four more of his brothers from the Meridian temple to make sure that the citizens of Sunfall understand.

The atmosphere in the city is still wary. There have been a few isolated fights, mostly between Sunfall Carja themselves. From what the Meridian Carja have reported, there’s a deep schism between the die-hard loyalists and those who are willing to grudgingly accept Avad as the rightful Sun King. It helps that the majority of the loyalists had become Eclipse, and while some elements still linger, the ones most prone to violence died at the Spire.

Erend is absolutely sure that Marad has several agents amid the convoy, but only one of them comes to the apartment to talk. “Stay two more days,” the agent says. “Stand down; let the Carja take care of anything first, but be ready if you’re needed. Don’t wander. Let them see that you came here to escort the priest and nothing else.”

The directives put them under virtual house arrest, but frankly, Erend is completely okay with that. He feels like he hasn’t gotten a decent amount of sleep in almost a week, and he’s pushed his body well beyond what he should have. If he’s supposed to stay put, he’s got good plans for that.  

Garvehl and the third Vanguardsman, Eddic, seem to agree. The energy in the apartment completely changes, and the two men casually dice while Erend naps. There’s a minimal amount of drinking, and a maximal amount of rest.  

He’s used to the weather in Meridian - oppressively humid day and night all year long - but Sunfall is an entirely different climate. The desert is painfully dry, the days burning hot and the nights so cold he almost feels like he’s back in the Claim. He misses Aloy’s warmth against his back, and the musky, herbal scent of her hair.

Life has slowed to an utter crawl as the world bakes around them, but around midday, Aloy shows back up at the apartment. If Erend doesn’t leap to his feet, it’s only because he’s one giant cramp and rendered limp by the heat.

“All quiet out there?” Garvehl asks.

“Better,” she says. “The herd of Broadheads was back, edging closer to Shadowside. They’re gone now.”

Erend is pretty sure that none of the Sunfall Carja have ever bothered to protect the slums, and he’s also pretty sure Aloy’s done her job so thoroughly and quietly that no one will ever even know there was a threat.

“Any good salvage?” Garvehl asks.

She raises an eyebrow. “My kill, my scrap. Unless you’re up to trade?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, just checking.”

Aloy looks at Erend. “If you’re up for it, I...I’d like to show you something.”

He’s not up for it. It’s way too hot, and he really, really wants to sleep, but...it’s Aloy. It’s Aloy, and she’s still wearing the silk that stops just above her navel. Between that and the way the machine plates spill from the knot of silk at her hips, he is physically incapable of saying no.

He follows her outside, drifting in her wake like a dazed moth.

She looks him over, frowning, and then nods to herself. “We’re going this way.”

They take a back route through the palace, one that he doesn’t want to know how she found, and then out onto an empty terrace. He didn’t think it could be hotter than inside the apartment, but it _is_ , and the air is so dry he can feel his lungs shrivel in his chest.

He doesn’t know what he’s expecting, but he does _not_ expect her to toss a rope over the edge of the wall. He doesn’t know what to _do_ until she gives him an impatient look.

Well. Okay. He’s climbed ropes. This is a thing that’s happening.

“If you’d rather not...” she says, biting her lip.

Nothing in the world will hurt as much as refusing her. “Lead the way.”

They slide down the rope. Erend very nearly doesn’t fall on his ass. At the bottom, they clamber around some rocks, and to a rickety wooden door.

He raises an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“We can go back,” she says.

“ _No_.” He absolutely doesn’t want to go back. She could be leading him into the middle of the biggest Eclipse stronghold in the entire Sundom, and he’ll still follow.

As they’re climbing down the second rope, his arms start to shake, and he almost has second thoughts.

Even before they hit the ground, he can feel the air change, growing cool and damp. His boots land in a puddle, and the blunt smell of mushrooms and moss fills his nose. After the searing heat above, the cave is the most wonderful thing he’s ever felt. Whatever reservations he had disappear. He could stay down here forever. He might actually try.

Then, as his eyes slowly adjust to the darkness, he realizes where they are.

Of all the things Erend doesn’t expect, he does _not_ expect this.

It’s not a cave. It’s not a cave at _all_.

This is a place from the Metal World. This is a place built by the Ancients, the same ones who made Aloy’s Focus. It’s absolutely not a creation of nature. It’s some kind of bunker, reclaimed over the centuries by dripping stone.

His skin goes to gooseflesh, and suddenly, he’s not tired at all.

He’s never seen anything like this. He’s never _imagined_ anything like this. He wonders if this like where Olin goes when he delves, and if it is, why the _fuck_ he’d never mentioned it.

This place is _beautiful_.

It’s dark and spare, man-made shapes gone to slick stone like melted wax. Impossible lights flicker and dance in clusters on the walls, pink and blue and white flecks like glimmering ore.

“Aloy,” he breathes.

She’s standing nearby, her face shy and concerned. “What do you think?”

She almost sounds as if she’s waiting for his judgement, as if this is something secret and sacred-

This is absolutely secret and sacred. The colors of the lights are the same colors as the tiny pinpricks that glow on her Focus. This is the place under Sunfall that she’d come to find, the one she’d almost died to find, and now she’s brought him into it.

This is a gift he doesn’t deserve, something rare and precious she’s putting in his trust.  

He can’t _begin_ to think of what to say, and even if he could, his voice would be too huge and rough in the damp silence.

“This is Zero Dawn,” she says quietly. “This is what Elisabet Sobek built.”

His throat is almost too tight to breathe.

“People died here,” she says, and somehow, he knows. There isn’t the cloying sourness of death, the sharp, wrong stench of spilled blood, but there’s a grim, final peace, something that his bones recognize before his head ever does.

Sacred, in more than one way.

“Do you want to go in?” she asks, and fire and spit, there can’t possibly be more, but there _is_.

The wall in front of them is carved with deep grooves that glow dull red when she approaches. She reaches out her hand, and voice comes from nowhere, the sound cutting through his skin and going straight to his marrow: “ _Hold for identiscan._ ”

It’s so different from the metal devil on the Spire, but it’s so much the same, and if he couldn’t breathe before, he _really_ can’t breathe now. It’s the same glowing red, and it’s _on_ her-

But then the light turns to the same calm blue as her pacified machines. “ _Genetic identity confirmed. Entry authorized. Greetings, Dr. Sobek. You are cleared to proceed.”_

Her words in Brightmarket come flooding back: _Doors open for me. They think I’m her_.

He’d thought he’d understood, but the full weight of what it means is right in front of him, and as the doors slide open, he realizes he doesn’t understand at _all_.

Erend is completely paralyzed by the magnitude, and he hasn’t even gone inside.

“Come on,” she says.

He staggers after her, his limbs disconnected and vague.

“I didn’t have a lot of time here,” Aloy says. “I needed to find the key to get into the facility in All-Mother, and there were a lot of Eclipse.” She swallows. “Do you want to see what she did?”

Elisabet Sobek and her superweapon. There had been blue light in Aloy’s spear, and red light in the sky. He remembers almost nothing from that last battle, only the fragments that end up in his nightmares. He knows it was impossible, but somehow, they’d won.

“I’m not sure,” he says honestly. “Should I?”

“You said you wanted to know what happened,” she says. “It’s...technical, but you’ll get the gist.”

He’s very, very afraid. This is who she is. This is who she was born - who she was _made_ \- to be, and even though he still has no idea how that was possible, he remembers the petrifying voice of the Metal Devil and the brutal waves of Corrupted machines. If those were the enemy, and Elisabet Sobek’s superweapon _defeated_ them, the amount of power and might in this dark bunker is absolutely terrifying.

Aloy is so much like Elisabet Sobek that doors open for her and call her by the wrong name. Aloy was _made_ to wield this weapon, and she _did_.

He’s been so focused on Aloy, the pretty girl from the middle of nowhere, the woman who is heat and life and everything he never knew he could want, that Erend _forgets_ how significant and powerful she really is. She’s the hero of the war, the Anointed of the Nora. He’s suddenly not at all sure he needs to know why.

“I love you,” he rasps, because he _does_. “All of you. Everything.”

She takes a deep breath. “This might change your mind.”

And there - that’s it. That’s the spark. He crosses the distance between them and takes her face in his hands, his fingers sinking into the wild blaze of her hair. “I am _never_ ,” he says fiercely, “going to change my mind. Hammer to steel, I won’t.”

Her eyes are dark with apprehension. “Even I didn’t expect this, Erend.”

“Well, in that case, I’m out.” Charming Oaf rolls his eyes. “Fire and spit, you think I’m going anywhere?” He lets his gaze drop to the revealing silk. “Especially when you look like _that_?” For emphasis, he leans down to kiss her, but she ducks her head.

“Why do you do that?” she asks. “You...switch.”

Her hands are on his wrists, and he can’t possibly escape. “What?”

She raises an eyebrow, and there’s no way he can bluff his way out of this. Fire and spit, she slices him down to his marrow, and he is never, ever prepared for it.

Charming Oaf has always been his favorite Erend to be. Charming Oaf is the man everyone wants to share a drink with, the one with an easy laugh and high tolerance for strong ale. He’s the one that wins the loyalty of the men under his command. He’s the one that flirts with pretty girls, and sometimes gets to take one home.

He doesn’t want to think about how Charming Oaf was born. He can’t remember a time when it wasn’t a facet of his personality. The bare facts are that Erend was a big kid with an angry father. He was the son of a failed clan, motherless and hungry. He learned to take a hit, and he learned how to make absolutely sure no one ever thought he was going to hit back. He was a big kid who learned the hard way to be sweet and more than a little dumb, someone who was only big and scary on command.

Ersa got smart and Erend got tough, but that dichotomy isn’t true anymore. He’s liked Charming Oaf, but suddenly, he isn’t sure Charming Oaf is something good for him to be. He’s trying not to drink and he’s trying to be more than he’s been.

He has no idea if Charming Oaf is helping, or holding him back, and he has no idea how to explain this. He doesn’t know if explaining is even possible.

He has to say something, anything, and maybe whatever he says will slow the uncomfortable pounding of his heart. “I can take a hit.” He swallows. “Besides, you like it.”

She regards him with that expression that claws him to bits, the one that sees right through the bluster and down to the raw, tender parts of him that he absolutely doesn’t want anyone to see. “Don’t tell me what I like,” she says quietly.  

He can’t stand the way she’s looking at him. “I’m good at big and scary,” he says. “It’s what I _do_.”

“Not with me.” Something softens in her face. “You know that.”

“Sometimes,” he points out.

“Not with me,” she repeats.

He doesn’t know what to say. His brain is completely blank and his blood roars in his ears. “I love you?” he tries.

She reaches up and runs her fingers through the hair at his jaw. “You keep saying that.”

“Now who’s switching?” he asks, because he’s an asshole, and there - he can feel her relax.

“Idiot,” she grumbles, but she lets him kiss her anyway.


	33. Chapter 33

They walk through the bunker. People made of light and shadow appear from nothing, telling him impossible things. Aloy was right: he doesn’t need to understand the the technical details to understand what happened, and he really, _really_ wishes he didn’t understand even that.

It wasn’t a weapon. It couldn’t be. Everything he knows about the Ancients - everything he’s been told, everything he’d _thought_ , when he’d bothered to think about it at all - falls from his head. He just knows that Aloy had called the Metal Devil HADES, and now he knows what HADES was. He doesn’t know what’s so wrong with this world that this metal devil, this - subroutine - thought it needed to be destroyed, but it’s starkly clear _why_ the battle at the Spire had actually been a battle against the end of the world.

It had been a hard fight. He’d thought he was going to die. He’d thought they were all dead, and he still doesn’t know how they aren’t, but even in the thick of it, he hadn’t considered _how_ it could be the end of the world.

As scared as he’d been, he absolutely hadn’t been scared enough.

Now, he understands. He doesn’t _get_ it, but he sees the enormity of it all laid out in front of him in impossible light and color, and he knows it’s bigger and more awful than he will ever comprehend.

The most impossible part is that the woman standing next to him, the woman he’s _kissed_ , the one sleeping by his side at night: she’s the one who stopped it.

Erend, the idiot brother, the useless drunk, the heir to the family shame. Erend, Ersa’s brother, the captain of the Vanguard, a man who has the confidence of the Sun King. Everything he is and has ever been is _nothing_ compared to what’s been presented right here.

He feels too hot and too cold all at once, and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he shoves them in his armpits and tries not to cry.

“...everything was dead,” he croaks. “But we’re here. How can we be here?”

“We were seeds,” Aloy says quietly. “They made everything into seeds, and then we were planted. Everything that’s here now, everything that we know: it’s all from the seeds she saved.”

Elisabet Sobek saved everything that’s ever lived, and she looks just like Aloy.

 _Doors open for me_.

He doesn’t remember sitting, but then he’s on the ground, his legs gone numb and trembling.

Aloy drops down beside him, cross-legged and just out of reach. They sit in silence for a long time, distant dripping water the only sound.

“Are you okay?” she finally asks, her voice barely above a whisper.

He is _not_ okay. He’s completely overwhelmed, and he may have lost all power of speech. This is an incredible amount of information, and Aloy _understands_ it. She understands all of it, and he has no idea how she’s learned it. He wonders if the knowledge came with her body, if the parts of Elisabet Sobek that became Aloy somehow contained the ability to understand these horrifying, impossible things from a thousand years ago.

This is what she’d been searching for. It started in the Embrace with the Eclipse and Olin’s Focus, and it took her Meridian, where Erend had foolishly - stupidly, so _stupidly_ \- taken her away from that. She’d left and kept going, and every time she’d come back, she’d told him the barest hint, and he’d been _annoyed_ she wouldn’t tell him more.

If she’d told him the truth, he wouldn’t have believed it. He believes anything that Aloy says, but he wouldn’t believed this. He’s not even sure he believes it right now.

He’d been lucky to get a minute of her time and he’s gotten so much more than that. Until this moment, he’s had no _idea_ what a minute of her time is actually worth, and the truth is _staggering._

“Erend?”

“The voice on your Focus,” he hears himself say. “That person...knew about this?”

“He knew where the doors would be. He didn’t know what was behind them.”

Erend swallows. “Who is he?”

“It’s...complicated.” She shakes her head. “We had...mutual interests.”

Not a friend. Not even a companion. He suddenly remembers her staggering up to the Meridian gate, how his name in her mouth was thick and swollen. “He _lied_ ,” Erend bursts out. “He talked in your ear and he sent you into _danger_ -”

“It _worked_ ,” she snaps. “The world got saved. He knew the doors. I was the key.”

He feels chilled. She’d arrived at the Spire looking like all the light had been sucked out of her. If she’d been running against HADES, if her only help was a voice in her head who valued these doors more than her valued her life-

She’s done all of this alone. She hadn’t had a _choice_. She was raised outcast, she lost everyone who might have loved her at the Proving, and then she’d had to carry this weight - this _huge, impossible_ weight, weight of the entire _world_ \- all by herself.

She’d showed up at the Spire, and he’d _seen_ the way her light was dying. He’d known she was under pressure, but he could never have understood _how much_.

He suddenly wants to grab her and run. He’s wanted to run away with her since the day they met, and now the urge is a white howl in his ears. He wants to stay with her, to weld himself to her side and make sure she is never, _ever_ alone.

She’s sitting there on the ground in front of him, the blue-pink-white flickering on her face and in her hair. Her hands are clutched together in her lap, and she looks more worried than he’s ever seen.

Aloy, who is life and light and heat. Aloy, the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, the wild-haired woman who sends an arrow into a machine’s heart less than a breath after he’s knocked off its belly plate. She’s the one who took one look at him and declared him to be more than he was, and she’s the one who made him _want_ to be.

He loves so very, very much. It’s too big for his chest, and it squeezes his lungs into his throat.

“Aloy,” he whispers, “why did you think this would change how I feel about you?”

She swallows. “It’s so _awful_.”

He doesn’t know how he’s standing, but suddenly, he is, and he’s pulling her to her feet along with him. “ _You_ aren’t,” he says hoarsely.

Her eyes gleam in the flickering lights, and she hugs herself, biting hard on her lower lip and unable to meet his gaze.

“You _aren’t_ ,” he repeats, and he wants to crawl inside her skin, to be the heat that warms her like she’s warmed him so many times. He wants to make her sing inside. He wants her to feel alive and whole and _wanted._ He wants to chase that awful expression and wipe away the tears she’s desperately refusing to let fall. The world has taken her and beaten her just as much as his father beat him, but she’s never had Ersa to tell her it wasn’t her fault. She’s never had Ersa to pick her up and run.

He isn’t Ersa, but by the forge, he has to _try_.

“Look,” he says, “you shouldn’t have been asked to do all that.”

“I wasn’t even _asked-_ ”

“Made, created, whatever. What I’m saying is you wanted a choice and they didn’t give you one.” He takes a breath. “They gave you bad ore, and then they left you to smelt it yourself. Fire and spit, Aloy, _listen_ to them.” He stabs a finger at the glowing plate where minutes before, Elisabet Sobek had stood and calmly told them how the world was going to end, and how she planned to fix it. “They had a whole _team_ . They had...I don’t even know...so many years of knowledge. They had everyone who ever _lived_ fighting to buy them time.” She is light and life and heat, and she’s standing here with damp trails snaking down her cheeks. “You aren’t her,” he says fiercely. “You _aren’t_. You’re you. Maybe these doors think you’re her, but they’re _wrong_.”

“They _aren’t-”_

“Who are you going to believe?” he says. “The voice in the wall, or me?”

She’s silent, the only movement the barely-contained tremble of her shoulders.

“I love you,” he says, and he wants to touch her more than anything he’s ever wanted. The air is cool and full of moss, and she isn't like this. She's so much brighter and wilder and more beautiful than this dark, dead space. She doesn’t belong here any more than she belongs in the Embrace or Meridian.

Her body is stiff in his arms, and he _shouldn’t_ try and push past that, but he _has_ to. He can’t wait for her. He can’t let her carry this load all on her own, and she _will_ unless he steps up. Her breath against his shoulder is shuddery and damp, and he palms the back of her head like Ersa did when he was small and scared. “I love you _so much_ ,” he says into her hair.

“I don’t know _why,_ ” she mumbles into his gambeson.

“I’ll tell you,” he says. “I’ll tell you until you’re so tired of it, you shove me off a roof.”

“I don’t want to talk,” she says miserably. “Everyone is always _talking_ -”

He can do not talking. He can not talk _so much._

He threads his fingers into her hair and draws her up for a kiss. It's deep and sweet and slow until suddenly it _isn’t_. She suddenly isn’t, and then she's pulling him back until they hit the edge of the stage behind her. Her mouth against his is hot and fierce and hard, and he’s so startled it feels like he’s trailing behind his body as it responds.

Her fingers card through the rough hair on his jaw, and he - he’s been obsessing about the skin at her waist, and it’s just as warm and soft as he’s imagined, and oh, he wants more of that-  

“Tell me to stop,” he breathes.

Her eyes glow in the flickering darkness, and very deliberately, she takes off her Focus and places it at the edge of her reach. He’s not sure what’s going on until she takes his face in her hands and tugs him back to her mouth. “No.”

Fire and spit.

The air is heavy and damp, but she’s way too warm and way too close, and his brain is sparking like the Watchers she’d taken out by the Tallneck circuit. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do - no, that’s a lie; he’s doesn’t know what he’s _allowed_ to do. He just knows what he _wants_ to do, and it flashes through his body like a spurt of blaze.

Her hand’s at his shoulder, and then her fingers are under the edge of his gambeson, digging into the fabric at his collarbone. This can’t possibly be - but then he’s touching the very edge of the silk at her ribs, and she _wanted_ no talking-

The line between skin and silk blurs beneath his fingers, and this is more than he’s ever hoped for, and if the world wasn’t so off-kilter, she’d kill him right here, she _should_ , but instead she’s swallowing his breath, and fire and spit-

He may actually die, but he’s never felt so alive. He loves her, he _loves_ her-

At that exact moment, something heavy drops from above into a puddle, and the splash scares the shit out of them both. His heart stops in his chest, and she’s on her feet and ready to strike, her Focus bright at her ear.

The rat shakes itself and waddles off.

There’s a long, frozen moment where the only sound is the echo of moving water.

“ _Fu_ _ck_ ,” he manages, and then they’re giggling like children, the adrenaline bubbling out and echoing off the stone.

Everything is shattered, the heat evaporating from his bones. His legs are jelly, and he absolutely has to sit down. She presses the back of her hand against her mouth, and drops down beside him. “You okay?” she asks under a hiccup.

“ _No._ ” It’s a single syllable, but somehow his voice manages to twist it into something choked and rising. His lungs haven’t quite started working again, and he thinks he might be shaking.

“Yeah,” she says, and then they’re laughing again, mingled hysteria and more than a little starved disappointment. “Me neither.”


	34. Chapter 34

Want battles fiercely with duty, but in the end, there’s a civil war ending above them, and they’ve been gone too long.

Still, right before they climb back up the rope, she leans against him, her mouth hard on his own, and he lets his hands slide up and over the smooth cage of her ribs.

Fire and spit. She’s the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, and he's not at all sure how this has become his life.

 

****

 

Erend feels like an anvil aching for the next hammerfall. His mouth is too empty, his body suddenly too thin and alone. He needs the weight of her, the urgent heat of her arms bringing him down and closer. The taste of her whirls in his mind with everything he’s seen, and he doesn’t know if he can process both at once.

She doesn’t stay in the apartment, because she can’t. It’s a city she doesn’t know full of people who would kill her if they knew who she was. He doesn’t know where she goes, but he hopes it makes her feel safe. He wants to have her by his side, to tuck himself around her as they sleep. He wants to tell her nothing’s changed between them. He wants to _show_ her. He’s not worthy of a _second_ of her time, and she’s given him _hours_. If he has to spend the rest of his life proving that he understands the gift he’s been given, he absolutely will.

Sleep is damn near impossible.

He feels like fuel at the precipice of ignition. He goes to the toilet and leans against the wall, and then he’s spurting into his own hand with barely any effort.

It satisfies the immediate need, but it doesn’t sate the roar in his blood.

 

****

 

The journey back to Meridian is _torture_.

He’s getting better, but it’s still more walking than he should do. Every muscle in his leg and back is twisted and screaming. The heat is oppressive, the dryness so clawing and pervasive that when he blows his nose, it comes away clogged with dust and streaked with blood. Machines line the road, and it feels like the day is just one long line of things that want to kill them.  

He’s brute force. He’s working his way back to being solid muscle. He can handle pain, and he’s good at taking a hit. He hurts, but he’s got his axe, and he can hit what he’s aiming for.

The worst part is _Aloy._

She’s deep in his blood. He can feel her body pressed up against his own, the searching hunger of her mouth. It’s the worst fever he’s ever had, and she’s ten feet away. He can _smell_ her on the breeze, the bright tang of her sweat and the heavy herbal warmth of her hair.

If he _looks_ at her, he’ll be on her, but she’s still wearing that damn silk and he can’t look away. The machine plates accentuate the curve of her hips, and his hands _ache_ to touch her.

When she looks back at him, her eyes are dark with want.

She is light and life and heat. He isn’t alone in this, and _that doesn’t help._

They stop to camp for the night, and he can’t touch her. There are too many people around, too many potential threats, and absolutely no privacy.

Eddic takes first watch. Erend is completely sore and exhausted, but when he collapses into his bedroll, he can’t sleep. She’s off scouting, and he _burns_.

He tries to think about what he’d seen in the place she’d called Zero Dawn, but all he can see is the way she’d choked back her own fear to show him something she was sure would drive them apart. She knew exactly how he felt, and she'd thought it was more important for him to know.

He’s not entirely convinced it wasn’t an attempt to push him away. She’s learned to be alone, and he knows that a few weeks isn’t nearly enough time to forge old chains into something new.

He lies on his back and contemplates the stars. At the edge of the distance, he can just barely make out the faint blue specks of a trio of Glinthawks in a copse of dead trees. The Carja call this desert the Rustwatch, a vast, burning nothing between Sunfall and the Daybrink. He wonders if this is what the land looked like when Elisabet Sobek saw it, or if the machine mind that rebuilt the world - GAIA - made it into something she wouldn’t recognize. There aren't even crumbling metal towers here, testaments to the time when everything was lost. He thinks of all the Metal World pieces he's seen in other places, and wonders what they looked like before. He wonders if there’s any way for the people now to ever even find out. Maybe that history is permanently lost.

He doesn’t understand how HADES decided this world needed to die. Was it something people are doing? Was it something they should be doing, but aren’t? Aloy had said in Brightmarket that the Derangement was a side effect, but he can’t see the root cause.

He wonders if Aloy knows, and if she does, when she's going to leave him to stop it.

He goes cold in a way that has nothing to do with the painfully chilly night air. Of course she's going to leave. She has to, and because he loves her, he'll have to let her go, even if letting go will feel like succumbing to the screaming metal in a Sawtooth’s maw.

She's just showed him what she’s up against. HADES was destroyed, but he doesn't think the other minds - the subroutines - were, and maybe they're still out there. Maybe Aloy is trying to find GAIA itself, the machine mind that controls everything.

He wants to ask, but he's suddenly afraid of the answer. If she has to go - if she _wants_ to go - he'll swallow himself back and slowly die.

 

****

 

They manage to route the Tallneck circuit mercifully unscathed. There’s just enough light to make the final push to Blazon Arch, but as they crest the final dune, everything they’ve missed comes out in a rush.

 _Two_ Ravagers. There’s way too much machine fury bearing down on him, and he’s _already_ exhausted. The sun’s in his eyes, it’s him and his two men and Aloy, and if he had time to think, he’d be very, very concerned.

He hears the first Ravager power up its gun, and he ducks behind the wall lining the road just in time. The bullets crack against the stone, sharp chips flying up and out. He hears the electric pop of a component being forcibly removed, and the bullets turn away, hitting the sand in a series of thick, muffled thumps.

Time to go over the top.

Steeling himself, he vaults over the wall and charges into the fray. Eddic is there with his tearblaster, Garvehl by his side slinging a sticky bomb at the nearest machine. The first Ravager is a lot closer than he’d anticipated, and Erend barely has the radius he needs to wind up a full swing. His first attempt hits the beast’s leg, knocking a plate loose but not knocking it off entirely. The Ravager whirls, and strikes out with its front legs.

This is going to hurt.

His new gambeson is still pretty stiff, and he doesn’t get out of the way in time. The first strike misses by an eyelash, but the second catches him square in the chest. Sparks fly as metal claws gouge steel plates, and he gets thrown to the ground. As he’s going down, he thrusts up with the butt of his axe, and manages to hook the throat plate of the machine. The Ravager spins one way; Erend and the plate tumble away in the other.

It whirls back, rearing back to strike again, and then there’s a sharp crack of an exploding freeze canister and everything goes white.

He’s encased in ice, covered in ice, frozen to his marrow.

He can’t move. He can’t _move_. He can’t move, Aloy is dead and there are Glinthawks swooping down-

This isn’t a nightmare. This isn’t the Spire. This is the desert. He isn’t dead. Aloy isn’t dead-

Aloy isn’t dead. She’s standing over him with blazing eyes, her shortbow moving like another muscle. “Get _up_!”

He doesn’t understand, and she gives him a sharp nudge that borders on a kick. “ _Move,"_  she bellows. “Erend, move _now!_ ”

He moves. Ice shatters off him, and he swings his axe as the machine charges again. He gets a solid hit to its head, its metal jaw flying. At the same moment, Aloy draws back two arrows at once and sends them both into the Ravager’s neck.

The head comes off completely, its sparking body dancing helplessly before the final collapse.

Aloy grabs at his hand and hauls Erend back to his feet. “Two minutes,” she snaps.

“I love you,” he agrees, and she darts away.

Eddic’s tearblaster has slowed the second Ravager, but not crippled it. It pounces on three legs, leaning precariously but still managing to lash out at Garvehl. He ducks, and launches another sticky bomb, this time landing a hit on its haunch. The entire back half of the machine explodes, and the power cell goes up with it.

Everything is wreathed in flame and lightning, and Erend can’t risk getting close enough strike. Aloy loads her shortbow again, but that’s when the Strider hits him square between his shoulderblades, and he goes sprawling.

Fire and spit.

He hadn’t even _seen_ the herd, but they’ve definitely seen him, and suddenly, it’s a Ravager and four panicked Striders.  

Eddic whirls, his tearblaster coughing compressed air. One Strider slips in the sand, and the tearblaster sends its blaze canister tumbling away. The machine huffs, and then grows an arrow from its forehead, falling to the ground in a twitching heap. Aloy takes out another - a perfect shot to its lens that sends it skidding into the wall - before turning back to the Ravager.

Erend’s entire body is numb from the hit. His lungs haven’t decided if they’re working or not, and his hands spasm on the handle of his axe. He may actually be staggering on his knees, but there are stars spinning in his eyes and he’s not really sure.

Two more Striders. His arms might not be attached to his brain, but they know how to lift the axe and swing. He gets one Strider in the leg and it collapses, kicking weakly but unable to move. He gets the shoulder of the other, and it rears back. He dodges the snap of its hooves, and hooks the butt of his axe into its underbelly, jerking hard to dislodge its heart.

The Ravager is still snarling, its cannon powering up with a whine. One of Aloy’s arrows bounces off its shoulder, and the bullets crack through the air. Garvehl goes down with a grunt, and Eddic skips around gouts of dripping flame to knock the rest of the sheathing off the beast’s face. Erend’s already mostly on the ground, so he lurches in the general direction of the machine. Rolling desperately to avoid getting stomped, he blindly strikes out and is rewarded when the belly plate drops on his head.

Aloy takes the shot, just like he knows she will, and the Ravager hasn’t even died when she and Eddic each grab one of Erend’s legs and pull hard.

With a great crash that shakes the ground, the Ravager falls right where Erend had been laying only half a breath before.

Aloy stabs a finger at him - “ _D_ _on’t_ die!” - and then hops up on top of the Ravager with her bow ready, one hand at her Focus as she spins in place, scanning for any other threats.

Eddic goes down on one knee, his chest heaving. “We good?”

She makes another two revolutions, and then slings her bow across her shoulders. “That was all of them, but we need to get out of here.”

As suddenly as it began, it’s over.

They’re all alive. Garvehl has one hand pressed to his shoulder, blood sheeting down his arm. Eddic’s missing a chunk from the bottom quarter panel of his gambeson, and Erend is still seeing stars. There’s a bloody smear across Aloy’s forehead, and when she reaches for him, her hands are shaking badly.

“Look at me,” she commands. “ _Look_ at me.”

He looks. She doesn’t have to ask twice.

She peers into his face. “Arms, legs, anything. Can you feel them?”

“I love you,” he says, and he means it to be an answer, but instead, her eyes go wide and scared.

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” she hisses. “Listen to me. This isn’t funny.”

He lurches to his feet, and it’s probably a mistake, because his vision tunnels and he very nearly goes right back down. “Garvehl,” he says.

“Fine, Cap,” the Vanguardsman calls tightly.

“We all accounted for?”

“Here,” Eddic confirms.

The sun’s resting on the horizon. “Parts?” he asks Aloy.

“We need to go,” she says tightly, her grip on his arm well beyond painful. “Now.”

 

****

 

They limp down into the canyon to Blazon Arch, and the Carja garrison immediately takes over. Garvehl is bleeding profusely, but it’s not a grievous wound. Bandages are applied and potions imbibed.

“Ravagers?” the garrison commander says. “So far from the Tallneck?”

“Something caught their eye,” Aloy says darkly. “It won’t happen again.”

When everyone is patched up, Eddic and Garvehl sit down with the Carja by the fire, and ale is passed around. It’s Erend’s cue to leave, because as soon as he sees the bottle, his hands start to shake. He’s already stretched to his last nerve, and right now, he really, _really_ wants that drink.

“Need to not be here,” he mumbles to Aloy, and it’s the hardest thing he’s ever said.

It’s the same house they stayed in before. He fumbles with his gambeson, finally shrugging it off. He knows better than to let it just drop to the floor, and he _should_ take the time to oil the dirt out of it, but he’s so far beyond exhausted he can barely see. He drapes it over a nearby chest and lets himself sink down to the edge of the bed. A splitting headache is starting to creep its way up the back of his neck.

“Here,” she says quietly, sitting down beside him and offering a bottle of ember.

The cut on her forehead is still oozing blood, and he reaches over to gently wipe it away with his thumb.  

“ _Drink_ it.”

Obediently, he downs the last of the bottle, and she leans in, squinting at his eyes.

“I’m not concussed,” he says.

Her hands are white fists in her lap.

“Hey,” he says quietly. “We’re okay.”

She’s clenched hard against hysterical fury. “I _don’t_ need you to take a hit-”

They’ve been over this ground. They’ve been over it so many times. “It’s what I do.”

“You don’t _have_ to-”

“Aloy,” he says, and covers her hands with his own. Her fingers are ice-cold. “I _know;_  it’s just that I’m _good_ at it. My job is to get in there and take the hits so you can do _your_ job and hit them where they’re weakest.”

She glowers. “I hate your job.”

“Hate the job, hate me.” It’s not a comfortable thing to say, but it’s the truth. “I’m brute strength. I’ve got the heavy armor for a reason. Steel before iron, and all that.”

She’s not convinced. “Look,” he says. “We both know why I do this. Given a choice between this and something else, you know what I’m gonna choose. This is what I know. It’s not going to last forever, but I’m young and I’m a little stupid, and this is what I do.”

“You’re _not_ stupid-”

“We make a good team,” he says quietly, “and we both know why.”

He wields an axe because he learned how to take a hit. She takes her shots at a distance because she learned to be alone.

All the fight goes out of her body, and she sags into herself. He tugs her against his shoulder and gently kisses the crust of blood at her hairline. “You were amazing, by the way.”

She mutters something against his chest.

“This is not at all what I had in mind for tonight,” he adds, “but...I’m so tired.”

That makes her chuckle, and she pushes him back against the mattress. She leans over him, her hair falling in a curtain around his head. “Don’t you dare die, Erend Vanguardsman,” she whispers against his mouth.

“Of course not,” he retorts. “I’ve still got those two minutes to collect on.”

He’s so tired, and he _hurts_ , but she’s right here, the warmth of her body heavy on his own. He’s his father’s son, and if he kisses her now, he’ll kiss her for the rest of the night.

He’s always his father’s son, and for once, he doesn’t mind.

 

****

 

He wakes up sometime in the night. He doesn't remember falling asleep, but Aloy is sprawled comfortably next to him.

Fire and spit, he loves her.

Except then, he realizes why she's so upset, and he almost throws up.

She's learned to be alone. Everyone she's ever loved or might have come to love has been violently taken from her - taken _in front_ of her - And every time he takes a hit, he's suddenly very, very sure she's seeing him about to die the same way.

His dreams have been drenched with her blood, but since she's been shaking him awake, he's noticed them slowly start to recede. For Aloy, the intimacy is the trigger: the longer she stays with him, the more the terror grows in her mind. He doesn't know if she's realized it, or if she's just caught in instinct’s blind roar.

He can do his best not to die - and if he's honest,  he's felt more focused in a fight since he stopped drinking - but he’s a soldier, and he knows a soldier’s odds.

He's already gone through two wars, and he's barely twenty-seven. He's thought that was a hell of an accomplishment, but Danna’s words echo in his skull and he's drenched in cold sweat: _you don't get a third chance._

He rolls over and tucks himself against Aloy. She's warm and bright, the herbal musk of her body surrounding him as he breathes into the dense cloud of her hair.

_No more playing around._

He has to do better. No matter where Aloy goes, he _has_ be waiting if she decides to come back, for both their sake. He's already known that, but he didn't _understand_ , the same way he didn't understand how much a minute of her time is truly worth.

She's heat and life and a hearth he didn't know he wanted. Maybe he'll take that final hit tomorrow, or in a week, or ten years. There's no way to know. He hasn't ever _thought_ about what comes next, but suddenly, he has to. He _wants_ to.

He's always assumed he'd die from the family curse, his belly bloated and his skin gone yellow. It seemed the obvious, inevitable end, if he didn't die a soldier's death first.

Curled around Aloy, he knows what he wants. He's not sure how he can get there, but by the forge, he's going to do everything he can to find out.


	35. Chapter 35

They make it back to Meridian. Erend has never been so glad to see the bright fluted rooftops, and even as the damp heat builds, he feels like he’s _home_.

He’s Oseram, born and bred in the the Claim, but the most he feels for it is wary indifference. Ersa took him out and he took her back; when he dies, he thinks he’d be alright being burned on a Carja pyre.

If he were a different man, there might come a time when he’d ask Aloy to go with him and stand in front of the ealdormen, but he washed his hands of the Claim years ago. He’d thought it was good to be back when he’d taken taken Ersa, but he thinks it was mostly just familiar. He’s trying not to drink, and he’s been mostly successful; if he went back to the Claim now, he’d just turn into another failed drunk, the sort of man people would gladly share a cup with but then shake their heads when he drank too much.

He’s more than that. Aloy said he was, and somehow, he’s found that maybe he is.

Aloy, who is standing right beside him, the bright cloud of her hair moving gently in the breeze and setting him ablaze. He’s so fucking sore, and what he _should_ do is sleep for about a month.

He does _not_ want to sleep.

Avad welcomes them back with open arms and grave concern, and most importantly, chairs. Once he sits down, Erend is absolutely sure he will never be able to get back up.

When Erend and Aloy finish their account of the last few days, the Sun-King breathes a sigh of relief. “When I sent Candescent Behnam as my envoy, I never dreamed he would calm the people as much as he has. You think his influence will last?”

“I don’t think he’s coming back,” Erend says. “His Carja guard could barely pull him away long enough to eat. He’ll win the city back one person at a time.”

“He is a good and trustworthy man,” Avad agrees. “He would have been High Priest many years ago, but he’s chosen to tend the fire of the common people. I am gratified to know my confidence was not misplaced. And you, my friends: the journey was not too arduous, I hope?”

Erend suddenly can’t breathe, heat rushing to his face. The man who should have been his brother-in-law absolutely notices, and one eyebrow raises almost imperceptibly.

“There’s heavy machine presence along the road,” Aloy says blithely. “The machines around the Tallneck circuit were particularly bad.” She frowns. “I don’t understand. I pacified the Tallneck.”

“Should there be more scouts, or more soldiers?” Avad asks.

“Scouts,” she says. “It’s better to try and avoid them.”

“Do you see any resolution?”

Her jaw clenches. “I’ll find one.”

She’s going to leave him, because of course she does. She has to. Erend is a stationary guard in love with a wandering woman, and this is the lot he’s chosen.  

He can smell her hair.

Marad comes and asks questions. Erend hurts, and even shifting in his chair and stretching his bad leg does nothing to help. Finally, Avad touches his arm. “We’ve kept you long enough. I apologize, but there is much we need to know.”

“It’s fine,” Erend says automatically.

“It isn’t,” Avad says. “But I know you to be as stubborn as your sister. Go rest, my friends. You’ve earned it.”

Erend isn’t Ersa, except for the parts where he absolutely is.

 

****

 

The walk to his apartment is painfully casual, but the second they're in the door, her mouth is on his and _yes_ , this is exactly what he so desperately wants.

Armor comes off.

Somehow, there’s the couch and they’re on it. There's kissing, her hair caught in his hands and eyes and mouth. There's tentative exploration, his hands drifting up her back and under the silk, and fire and spit, the way the powerful strength of her shoulders beneath his palms makes him blaze.

He _hurts_. Fire and spit, he hurts, but heat is a balm, and there’s more than one kind of heat. He’s lost in her, in the bright pressure of her mouth and the way her fingers move across his scalp to tangle in the thick stripe of hair at his crown.

Then his hands drift over a tight, knobbled scar, and the machinery of his brain abruptly grinds to a halt.

For a long moment, neither of them breathe.

“It’s okay,” she finally says, her voice soft. “It’s healing.”

His throat is too tight to respond.

“See?” She leans back, hiking her shirt up - fire and _spit_ , the _freckles_ \- to expose more skin that he’d ever thought he’d get to see.

Except there are way too many scars across her torso, pale streaks and ragged pink ribbons. His eyes burn and he suddenly doesn’t know where he’s supposed to look. He very desperately wants to concentrate on the way her shirt exposes the barest curve of breast, the delicate architecture of her ribs as they rise above compact muscle, but he _can’t_.

“No blood,” she says.

 _Not right_ _now,_ he wants to say, but it comes out as wordless, strangled croak.

One hand goes to his face. “Don’t,” she says. “Erend, don’t do this to yourself.”

“Tell me?” he makes himself ask.

She’s survived so many things. Maybe if she explains them, it’ll sink into his frantic brain that she’s stronger than his dreams make her out to be.

“Are you sure?” she says doubtfully.

He is absolutely not sure at all. “Please?”

She takes a breath. “Ravager,” she says, pointing to the three pink circles at her ribs. Her hand moves in a catalog. “Sawtooth. Sawtooth. Grazer. Behemoth. Um...Scrapper?” She holds out her arms, nodding at the ones buried in the thick spray of orange freckles. “Strider. Sawtooth. Tree branch. Stray arrow. Mm...definitely a Scrapper right there.” She points to the angry line at her jaw. “Thunderjaw, but you knew that.”

He has to say something. She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and she’s sprawled right here in front of him, an unselfconscious inventory of gorgeous, milky skin.

He makes himself reach out. “This one,” he says, smoothing his thumb over the thin mark above her right eyebrow.

“A rock,” she says quietly. “Thrown by a Nora.”

He hates them. He hates their sanctimonious hypocrisy. He hates the way they only let her in when they assigned her a value-

“Your turn,” she says, and then her fingers rest on the silver line high on his cheekbone. “This one.”

Of course she’d ask about that one first. “Bottle,” he says shortly.

Her fingers drift down his neck to the hollow just above his clavicle. “This one.”

He wants to tell her almost every scar he has was given to him before he’d ever been fitted for armor. Once he’d had armor, he’d had a reason to be big and scary, and big and scary protected him in a way it never had before. He’d worn arrow-breaker into his first battle, and he’d come out barely scratched. The scars he's earned as a soldier are almost exclusively from the Spire and not a single one is small.

Oseram don't get small scars, not if they're wearing their armor. They lose limbs. They lose eyes and teeth.

They die.

There isn't really a middle ground. It's harsh and brutal exactly like the Claim, and he absolutely can't tell that to Aloy.

“My armor is _really_ good,” he says instead, because it's not a lie, and then because he's an asshole, he teases, “Maybe you should give Oseram steel another try.”

She absolutely sees through it. “Don't take my hits,” she snaps.

Moth and flame, flame and moth. She's going to keep telling him this forever, and he's going to keep doing it forever anyway. “Don't make my choices for me,” Erend says quietly.

It's not something he wants to say, but for both of them, Aloy needs to hear it.

Her entire body goes completely still, and then she launches to her feet and bolts. The front door slams behind her, a hard bang that echoes off the stone walls. Thirty seconds later, she flings the door open, stalks across the floor to grab her hunting kit, and storms back out.

If it didn’t feel like a Trampler to his chest, it would be hilarious.

 

****

 

He hurts. He hurts and he’s annoyed, and the warmth of her skin rings through his bones.

That’s a lie. He’s not annoyed. It’s an easy word to assign to the bloom of pain in his chest, but he’s suddenly exhausted, and he can’t make himself analyze it.

He thinks very hard about just passing out here on the couch, but...he really wants his own bed. He hauls himself to his feet and somehow makes it upstairs.

Sometime in the early morning hours, he hears the front door creak closed and the metal slide of the latch. She warily eases down beside him, not quite touching, but he reaches over to palm the side of her head anyway.

If he were Charming Oaf, he’d say something like _I knew you just couldn’t stay gone_ , but Charming Oaf would just make this worse. Erend has to be just Erend, because he’s never really been just Erend. Now, it’s all he’s got left, and he's still flailing as he figures it out.   

 

****

 

When Erend wakes up, she’s gone again, but most of her travel gear is still downstairs. The room smells like the warm herbal scent of her hair, with a new floral bite he doesn’t recognize but suddenly finds very appealing. Her hunting kit is gone, but on the table by the kitchen, Aloy's left a small jar of shock wax paste and a heavy bottle of healing ember puree.

One to fortify his armor and one to fortify himself. It’s probably as close to a peace offering as she’s able to make.

Fire and spit, he loves her.

He drinks the ember, swallowing hard against the thick, oily texture. It’s just after sunrise, but he’s on the precipice between the deep ache that precludes movement and the one that requires it. He’s not quite up to jogging, but he needs to walk, so he takes his armor down to the command post and sits under the wide eaves, massaging wax into leather as the morning fog starts to glow.

Tandin eventually joins him, offering a mug of pleasantly hot and bitter tea. “Garvehl?” Erend asks. “Eddic?”

“Both sleeping,” the Vanguardsman confirms. “Garvehl was making it out to be this mortal wound, but it’s barely a scratch.”

“It’s a little more than a scratch.”

“ _Barely_.” Tandin leans back against the wall. “So. Civil war’s over. That’s good, right? What’s it mean for us?”

“Means we’ve got to be on our toes,” Erend says. “I know we’ve got most of the tunnels under the palace mapped or blocked, but I want to make absolutely sure the only ways in or out are well-lit and guarded.”

“It’ll get done. Should we bring the Carja garrison in on this?”

He considers. The garrison commander isn’t exactly thrilled to be working with the Vanguard, but Erend’s spent long months winning him over. “I’ll ask.” If he words it right, it’ll sound like two allies engaged in mutual defense, and maybe even garner more support.

“Adar and I were thinking,” says Tandin.

“Dangerous,” Erend interjects.

“-we were _thinking_ ,” the Vanguardsman goes on, “and there's a handful of mercenaries in town that might be worth recruiting.”

He frowns. It’s been almost five years since the Vanguard was formed, and he’s known every single of his men for even longer. Ersa had been militant about recruiting, even during the war, handpicking each person after a lengthy - and admittedly terrifying - scrutiny.

On the one hand, he doesn’t want to risk introducing a potential disruptive element to his tightly-knit crew. He doesn’t want to risk Avad and his family. On the other hand, the Vanguard lost almost half its numbers at the Spire, and he absolutely doesn’t trust the Carja garrison to do their job as well as he can. The garrison protects the city and everyone in it; the Vanguard exclusively protects Avad, and that narrow focus makes them better.

“Where are they from?” he asks.

“Two from Pitchcliff, three from Free Heap.”

“What do you think?”

Tandin stiffens. “I don’t-”

“You’re my third,” Erend reminds him.

He isn’t Ersa, but Erend is still Captain of the Vanguard, and one of his absolute favorite things is watching his men squirm when he offers them autonomy. Ersa was never cruel, but under her command, the Vanguard wasn’t a democracy. It still isn’t, but his men are better when they know he trusts them this way. They work together more effectively, and they're better in a fight. Erend trusts Adar to keep everyone in line when he’s not around. He trusts Tandin to be the voice when no one else wants to speak up.

“They’re not bad,” Tandin finally admits. “They’ve stayed in town. They’ve been at the same taverns we have. They’re probably just taking a break between jobs, but they’re solid. The ones from Free Heap came with Petra and manned the cannons.”

“They say why they’re mercs?” There isn’t any room in the Vanguard for sadists, and anyone who’s more interested in money than purpose is a liability Erend's not willing to accept.

“Pitchcliff ones are brothers,” Tandin says. “They haven’t said directly, but I’m pretty sure they’re raised outside the Claim. Alber mentioned something about Mainspring, and they had no idea.”

It’s not a deal-breaker. The ealdormen get weird about certain things; the only reason Ersa managed to parlay with them was through the force of her own personality. “The others?”

“The Free Heap boys were taken for the Sun Ring.”

“Where were they during the liberation?” Erend asks.

Tandin snorts. “Not old enough to hold an axe. These kids barely shave. The Pitchcliff boys fought with the Banuk up north.”

He would bet shards the ones from Pitchcliff have a Banuk father. Under the wrong circumstances, it would easily get an Oseram woman expelled from the Claim. “I want to talk with them,” Erend says.

“You want to meet them at the tavern, or somewhere else?” It’s a valid question, and Tandin delivers it bluntly.

Erend hurts. His bad leg is still clenched and aching, and he’s deliberately not thinking about Aloy, and he is not at all sure he can resist an ale right now. “Command post,” he says, and it’s harder than he’d like it to be. “You chat them up at the tavern. Have a good number of Vanguard around, but just to observe, not for pressure. If they’re agreeable, then we can talk.”

He’s the captain. If he’s the first person to float the idea, they’ll get overwhelmed. Tandin’s got enough rank that they’ll be impressed, but they won’t be intimidated. By the time they get through Tandin and Adar, they’ll have a good idea of what the Vanguard is about, and Erend can test the carbon in their steel.

He’s not Ersa. He hadn’t thought there was anything wrong with the way she lead the Vanguard, but he’d also been too drunk to really think about it. Now that he’s the captain, the changes he’s making feel...natural. It isn’t what Ersa would have done, but he’s not Ersa, and even though it still feels like a rock in his chest, she’s been gone for almost two years. Time keeps moving, and the Vanguard has to move along with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thanksgiving, lovelies. I'm having an immense amount of fun writing this, and it's so awesome that you're enjoying it as much as I am. I don't say thank you nearly often enough, but always, always imagine me as a gremlin in a cave, shoving more chapters at you in abject gratitude. <3


	36. Chapter 36

He stays at the command post. He talks with Tandin, and then he talks with Adar. He checks on Garvehl and reminds Eddic to get his armor patched. A couple of the guys stagger in for the morning still stinking drunk, and Erend is the captain, so he knocks some heads and sends them home to sober up. He assigns work duties and patrol routes.

Supplies are needed and Tandin’s having no luck with the assistant quartermaster, so Erend limps to the palace himself.

His body is caught between stiffness and pain, and it’s hard to strike a workable balance. He keeps being told he’s healing well, but it’s still an ugly, angry scab, and instead of a strong, smooth transition from knee to calf to toe, he has an awkward bulge of muscle that abruptly necks down.

That bit from muscle to foot looks it should belong to a skinny old man. He thinks he’ll probably get to a point where he can bend at the ankle - at least, he hopes so, that the aching stretch isn’t just clotting scar tissue - but right now, it throws off his entire gait.  

He _hates_ it. He hates every bit of it, but then Kip inevitably gleefully details something about his future mechanical hand, and Erend reminds himself that he should be grateful he even has a leg at all.

_You don’t get a third chance._

Although...if he’s honest, Kip’s hand sounds like it’s going to be _amazing._

The quartermaster’s a good man Erend’s worked with many times in the past, but his assistant is a younger son of a lesser noble house, and clearly annoyed at being assigned a job that anyone else would be honored to have.

Erend made himself into firm, flexible steel to forge a partnership with the Carja garrison. He can do the same here: he squares his shoulders and in four sentences, his men have exactly what they need.

It’s a different power than big and scary; it’s solid and quiet, and he doesn’t feel that spurt of awkward shame when it needs to be used. He just feels...calm, and more than a little sad.

 

****

 

Erend’s back at the command post, his bad leg stretched out in the sun as he oils his gambeson, when Aloy is suddenly sitting next to him.

One of these days, he’s going to hear her come up, but in the meantime, he just has to try very, very hard not to yelp.

“Hi,” he says faintly.

She’s just out of reach, folded stiffly in on herself.

“Hungry?” he asks, offering out a savory corn cake stuffed with little slices of roasted boar and flavored with fire kiln. They’re not really his favorite - Carja cuisine leans a little too heavily on sharp spices for his bland Claim preferences - but they’re heavy and hearty, and he’s trying to rebuild muscle mass as fast as he can.

She accepts the cake, breaking pieces off without speaking.

Fire and spit, this isn’t an argument he wants to have. “What do you want me to say?” he asks tiredly. “I feel like we’re on the level about this.”

Aloy doesn’t look at him.

“We’re gonna have this fight forever,” he says. “You know that.”

She flares. “You assume a lot.”

“I don’t,” he says honestly. “I’m just _saying_.”

“Then you say a lot.”

He’s going to be an asshole about this, because he hurts and he loves her so much he can barely breathe. “You came back, didn’t you?”

“You keep telling me I don’t have to.”

“And I’m gonna _keep_ telling you that, because you _don’t_.” He takes a breath. “ _You_ keep telling me you make your own choices; well, this is mine. I'm here if you want, and I'm here if you don't.”

“What if I _never_ came back?”

She lobs the words at him like sticky bombs from a slingshot, but Erend is good at taking a hit. “I'm not going anywhere.”

“You have to live your own life. You can't rely on me-"

“I know.” He needs Charming Oaf right now, but Charming Oaf has been exposed to bare flame and burnt to ash. As much as Erend struggles, he can’t bring him back. “Look, Aloy. I owe you so much. I do. Ersa kicked my ass for years, but it didn’t make _sense_ until you dropped that damn pallet into Olin’s basement. You didn’t have to help me, but you did.”

“You have lots of help,” she says dubiously.

“I’ve been _drunk_ ,” he says. “Any help I got was to keep me from falling over.”

“That’s not true-”

“It’s _mostly_ true.”

“ _You_ cleaned yourself up, Erend.” Her eyes flash. “You keep assigning all this power to me, but I haven’t _done_ anything. You’re just like the Nora, making me out to be this...this _mystical_ person, and I’m _not._ ”

“That’s _not_ what I’m saying.” He swallows. He isn’t good with words, but he keeps _trying._  He has to. “Maybe you weren’t the one knocking the drink out of my hand. I’ll give you that. But you know what? _You_ told me I’m more than I was. That’s something you said. Verbatim. Ersa tried to beat that into my thick skull for _years_ , but she was my sister, you know? I - I couldn’t hear it from her. I wouldn’t. She-” he has to say it. It’s been two years. It’s true whether he wants it to be or not, and it’s never going to not be true- “she _died_ saying it, and I _still_ wouldn’t hear her. But then _you_ showed up and said the same damn thing, and Aloy, I didn’t fucking believe you. I didn’t. But I made myself _try_ , because-” because she’s life and light and heat, a mesmerizing blaze of hair and copper-ore eyes. She’s a hearth he didn’t know he wanted, and air he didn’t think he deserved to breathe. “It’s not some mystical power. Fire and spit, I know that. It’s you saying something and me repeating it to myself until it started to sink in.”

She’s silent, her posture wary.

He swallows. “It’s me repeating to myself over and over that you thought I’m better than I was, and it’s me gritting my teeth trying to make that true.”

“It was always true-”

“It _wasn’t_. You saw me at Pitchcliff. You saw me at Brightmarket _._ ”

She doesn’t say anything.

“I didn’t know what I had. I didn’t know who I _was_. I’m still not sure I know. Maybe I won’t ever. But I do know that I'm the captain of the Sun King’s personal Vanguard. I've got the best men in or out of the Claim, and an entire Sundom to patrol. I've got Avad and his family to protect, and I’m _good_ at what I do.” He looks her in the eye. “Maybe I would have made my way there eventually, but there’s this pretty girl from the middle of nowhere, and she can get so _annoyed_ with me.”

There - she’s sucking her cheek to try and hide the smirk.

“Not saying I don't want you here,” he says. “By the forge, Aloy, I want you here. I want whatever you can give me, and I want to give you whatever you need. If you go, I'll be captaining and patrolling and all those things, but I'm always gonna have one eye on the city gates, waiting for you to walk back in.”

“You get hurt,” she tries. “It's not a good choice-”

“I get hurt because that’s what I _do_. I take the hits because I know I can, and I know _how_. I didn’t want-” he swallows. “It wasn’t my choice to learn that, but I did, and fire and spit, if I can take what my dad- if I can turn this around and _do_ something, it doesn’t get fixed, but it _helps_. And Aloy... tell me it doesn't hurt you. Tell me you don't hate it every time you walk away.”

She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. Her face crumples in on itself, and she stuffs her hands under her armpits.

“What do you want?” she finally asks. “You keep saying it’s my choice-”

“It _is_ -”

“Maybe I want some input!”

He scrubs at his face. “I love you. You know that. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”

She stares at the sky. “I am... _so_ bad at this.”

“You think I’m any better?” He snorts. “It’s all...training.”

“Training,” she says dubiously, and he knows she _loves_ that term.

“I’m sore as hell,” he says. “But what I know about sparring is that you work _with_ your partner.”

She frowns, but this time, she’s genuinely confused, and _oh-_

He’s an idiot. He is _such_ an idiot.

“Fire and spit,” Erend says. “...you’ve never actually sparred with anyone.”

The bright flare of defensive anger is all the answer he needs. “I’m faster alone,” she says stiffly, but it explains _so much_.

It isn’t physically possible for him to be more angry at the Nora than he already is, but she’s so tiny and fierce in this moment that his heart crushes the air from his lungs. “I love you,” he says.

She narrows her eyes, and oh, he’s in for it, but he’s _so_ ready. “Look,” he says. “If we’re gonna do this, we have to do it right.”

“ _No_ -”

“Oh yeah.”

 

****

 

The practice ring at the barracks is hard-packed dirt, and it’s nothing but mud from the recent rain.

He’s addressed all the things that that urgently need his attention, and he’s supposed to be resting _anyway_. “You know where to find me,” he says to Tandin.

The Vanguardsman manages to almost completely hide his grin. “Yeah I do.”

Erend can feel the heat creep into his ears. “Shut up.”

It doesn’t help that Aloy is standing right behind him, smirking.

They go back to his apartment. He doesn’t have nearly as many rugs as Olin, but he’s got a couple, and he absolutely shouldn’t try to shove the couch back against the wall, but he does.

“Want help with that?” Aloy asks, making no move to help.

“Nope, got it. Totally fine.”

The room isn’t big, but it’s enough, and when he’s done, he stands in the middle. “Well?”

“Are we seriously doing this?”

“Training,” he says.

“This is ridiculous.”

Maybe Charming Oaf is gone, but Erend still knows how to flirt. “You like me.”

She rolls her eyes.

Aloy isn’t a grappler. She stays on the edge of combat, taking out opponents with a surgical precision. She’s fast and strong and agile, and she uses those skills to stay as far out of reach as possible. She hides in tall grass and pacifies machines to take out their fellows on her behalf. She’s beautiful and dangerous, and in a ground fight, she has absolutely _no_ idea what she’s doing.

Erend, on the other hand, was born with his face pressed into the dirt, and he’s just gotten bigger and better ever since. She dives at him, frustration and misplaced anger channelled into movement. He almost just _leans_ to one side, and she goes sprawling on the floor behind him.

“This is absurd,” she grumbles.

“Now I’m genuinely concerned,” Erend says. “I mean. That was _terrible_.”

She glares. “I don’t need this.”

“Clearly, you _do_.” She’s going to hit him for that, regardless of whether or not she can actually catch him. He has to keep talking. “It’s not about the fight,” he says quietly, and helps her to her feet. “I don’t know what I’m doing. Neither of us do. But this was how I learned to...” He has to say it. He _has_ to. “How it wasn’t going to hurt. Touching. How to be this close to another person without-” his throat is closing up, and he has to _hurry_ , before he can’t talk at all- “without...you know.”

He can’t say it, not even to her. He can’t tell her how Ersa got them out of Mainspring and away from the clan, but it had taken months before he’d actually slept through the night. The first time someone accidentally bumped his shoulder, he’d immediately lashed out. He was a big kid with terrified eyes and white noise roaring his brain, and it had gotten them both into trouble.

Ersa eventually talked their way onto a mercenary crew, and Erend learned to fight. He’d gone round after round in the sparring ring, learning against men half his size and twice his age. He grew into Charming Oaf. He’d learned to drink, and he learned to like it.

He knew how to take a hit, so learning how to land one was easy.

Aloy doesn’t touch anyone. She’s deadly with a bow, a weapon that allows her to make her kill while remaining utterly unseen. Maybe she hadn’t gotten the raw edge of a father’s fist, but she’s been conditioned the same way, and he doesn’t know how to help except the way he was helped himself.

“It’s not about the fight,” he repeats. “You go against someone this way, the goal isn’t to hurt them. The goal is to use their body to teach yourself.”

“And you want to teach me,” she says, dubious.

“If you knew what you were doing, you’d have me on my ass in a second,” Erend says.

She raises an eyebrow. “I can do that right now.”

“Oh really?”

The rope hasn’t even registered. He’s been too distracted by the expanse of skin under Carja silk, and she _always_ has a large collection of things tied to her belt.

It’s not a hard fall. Even surprised, even sore and off-balanced by his bad leg, he still knows how to take a hit, and then he’s on the floor.

She’s standing above him, smugly coiling the rope back up. “You were saying?”

The sight of her, the lines of her stomach and shoulders, the blaze of her hair. “I love you,” he breathes.

“Your face right now.”

He doesn’t care what his face is doing. He just wants to lie here and look at her.

She drops down to stretch out beside him, propping her head up on one hand. “Fighting’s not going to solve this,” she says seriously.

“You mean we can’t just go twenty rounds?” He huffs. “That would make everything so much easier.”

She scowls.

“There’s too many things going in too many directions,” Erend admits. “You don’t want me to get hit, but that’s what I do. I don’t want you to get hurt, but that’s...unavoidable. I don’t want to tie you down, and I don’t know what the hell _you_ want.”

“Those aren’t different directions,” Aloy says.

“Really?” He’s suddenly back at the Spire, his body curled around hers as the rockets shatter the world around them. He’s begging to take her place in the chaos, and she’s pushing him away. “Because I can’t see-”

“Grappling isn’t going to solve this.”

He knows that. He’s known that all along, but he doesn’t have the _language_ to explain any of it. He’s just...using the language he knows, and all of it, every single word, is brute force. Violence is beaten into his marrow, and he has no idea how to explain that’s not what he wants.

He’s tired of taking a hit. Right now, he just wants to _burn_.

“What are we going to do?” They’ll have this fight over and over and over again. They’ll fight until they either figure it out or pummel each other into dust.

“I don’t know,” she says quietly. “I guess it depends on what we want to do.”

“You know what I want,” he says.

Aloy considers him, one hand fisted amid copper-bright braids. “I know,” she says. “I just don’t understand it.”

He almost laughs, because there’s a huge sinkhole yawning in his chest and if he doesn’t laugh he’s going to die right here on his own floor. “You and me both.”


	37. Chapter 37

They lie there, just breathing, for a long time. Distant market noise leaks in through the windows, merchants calling and haggling, and the clack of Carja boots on stone.

“I’ve never stayed anywhere this long,” Aloy says. “At least, not...where other people are.”

“Is that bad?”

“I don’t know.”

His bad leg is complaining, so he sits up, bringing his foot back to ease the stretch. “Would it be easier if you had your own place? I’m sure Marad’s offer of Olin’s house still stands.”

Something in her face goes small and hard, and he adds quickly, “Not that I don’t want you here. I, um.” He has to make himself say it. “I sleep better when you’re here.”

“Me too,” she says quietly.

Somewhere in her brain, she’s identified him as safe, and he is very definitely not safe, but he _wants_ to be.

“...are you bored?”

She snorts like it’s a foreign concept, but considers. “I had things to do in the Embrace. Rost-” her voice almost doesn’t crack- “taught me everything: how to hunt, how to skin and tan, how to build and climb. I was focused on the Proving, and everything I did was to prepare myself for it. It was my whole world until suddenly it was there, and then it _wasn’t._ And Rost-” She takes a breath, and her words take on a hard, bitter edge. “I wanted justice, and I wanted _revenge_.”

That was how he’d met her at the Meridian gate, anger boiling off her as he staggered and clutched at the edge of her sleeve. She’d been terse, and he thought it was just what he deserved as Ersa’s idiot brother, the useless drunk. He hadn’t recognized her own deep grief, because he hadn’t known her at all. She’d been a pretty face he’d seen once, and nothing more.

He thinks back to that moment at the gate. He hadn’t known what she would become. He hadn’t known what _he_ would become, because of her.

“I couldn’t stop moving,” Aloy says miserably. “I didn’t know I was running against the clock until it was almost too late, and I still didn’t make it in time.”

“You did,” he interjects. “We stopped them-”

“People _died_ ,” she snaps. “If I’d been faster, I could have gotten to HADES before- I could have gotten to _Helis_ -”

Abruptly, she sits up and takes off her Focus, putting it on the rug by her feet. “I’m going to kill him,” she says, and if Erend didn’t know her, it would just sound casual. If he didn’t know her, he wouldn’t hear the thin tremble of fury beneath the statement. “If I ever see him again, he’ll be dead before he even hits the ground.”

“Sylens,” Erend says.

“I know I can’t find him,” she says fiercely. “He’ll see me coming. He always has. He knows my Focus. He can track me through it, and he’ll be gone before I even know where he’s been.”

“Take it off.” The words burst from his chest. “Don’t ever put it back on again. We can-”

“I _need_ it.” Her hands go to impotent fists. “I need it for everything I do, and even if I didn’t, it hasn’t finished reconstructing Elisabet’s journals. I still don’t know how to fix the Derangement. As long as there are machines, I need my Focus, and he fucking _knows_ that.”

“Can you…” He has absolutely no idea how the technology works. She reads glyphs. She sees things that aren’t there. She can track something that doesn’t exist, and she can take a machine down with a single arrow. “Can you make it so he can’t see you?”

She shakes her head. “I’m trying. He knows the programming so much better than I do. He worked with-” she closes her mouth with an audible click of teeth. “I’ll never be as adept as he is.”

Ersa got clever and Erend got tough, but he’s trying to claim some semblance of clever for himself. “HADES,” he says, and feels like throwing up.

“Yeah,” Aloy says quietly.

Erend isn’t a general, but he knows about traitors. The most dangerous man in a fight is the one switching sides, and there’s no guarantee that he won’t switch again. “Eclipse.”

He knows before she even nods, her entire body gone resigned and tired.

This man in her head somehow made an army, and then sent one outcast girl to stop them.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Aloy says. “He didn’t know who I was any more than I did. He just knew Eclipse saw me through Olin’s Focus. HADES knew I was Elisabet Sobek long before anyone else. GAIA made me,” she says. “She saw that HADES escaped her control. She made me, knowing - hoping - I could stop HADES in time.”

 _Doors open for me. They think I’m her_.

A thousand questions flood into Erend’s mind, but he can’t articulate most of them. “Sylens...he can’t hear you when you take it off.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t know for sure?”

“I don’t take it off,” she says. “I’ve...only when where Rost- and then with _you_ -” She grits her teeth. “Some things I can’t let him see. Some things are _mine,_  and mine only.”

She’s learned to be alone, and then she’s had someone watching her every move. He should feel a wild thrill that she’s claimed him for her own, but he’s just angry, angrier than he’s ever been in his entire life. “We can’t find him?”

“Not without my Focus,” she says. “And we can’t find him _because_ of it.”

He’s absolutely sure that she saved the world because of the little metal chip at her temple, but this woman who grew up alone had to sacrifice any notion of privacy to do so. There’s so _much_ he doesn’t know about her, about what she’s done and what she’s had to do, and the worst part is that he doesn’t even know the questions to ask. He’s thought he’s been teasing it apart, but he suddenly feels like that day in the cavern below Sunfall: the truth of the world is so much bigger and more complicated than he can ever understand, and everything Aloy is, everything she’s ever been, is at its heart.

And Erend - Erend suggested _grappling_.

 

****

 

The first thing he does is go to the market. There’s a leatherworker he particularly likes, an Oseram artisan whose wares are sturdy and deceptively practical. He knows exactly what he wants, and there is no price he won’t pay.

When it’s done, he knows he’s chosen well.

Aloy has disappeared to wherever she usually goes, and Erend paces the floor until she gets back. “I got you something,” he says without preamble, thrusting the fabric-wrapped package at her. His heart pounds in his throat.

She frowns, but then her face goes utterly still when she pulls it out. “What is it?” she asks quietly.

It’s a small pouch barely the length of his thumb, firmly stitched to a sturdy leather thong. He had the artisan work the pouch in Nora blue and green, woven through with luminous braiding and peppered with tiny beads like floating sparks. The button is a rounded piece of white machine plate, securely closing the flap. “It’s for your Focus,” he says, “for when you don’t want anyone in your head.” Suddenly, he’s afraid it’s a presumptuous gift, and that she hates it. “You said he can’t hear you if you’re not wearing it, but you still need it. This way, it’s still with you, it’s still _on_ you, so you won’t lose it.”

She hasn’t moved, the pouch balanced on her palm.

“It’s waxed and waterproof,” he says. “I mean, I figured it wouldn’t matter, but just in case. Also I, um. Sparkworkers have this weave that keeps them from getting shocked, and I don’t know _anything_ , but she said it would work in something small, too, and I thought since your Focus _looks_ like metal-”

“You thought maybe it would block a transmission?” Her voice is so thick the words almost don’t come out.

“I have no idea,” he admits. “I just. I had her put everything in it that you can put in armor. There’s corruption glaze, because of metalburn, and some fire kiln, even though that’s probably not...” He wants to give her a little freedom, but it’s still the most precious thing she owns, and he wants to protect that, too. “The strap,” he offers. “Carja thread. Can’t say it’ll never break, but it’s the best I could find.”

With shaking hands, she takes off her Focus and tucks it in the pouch. It fits perfectly, just as he’s _hoped_ it would, and she slips the thong around her neck. It drops to her collarbone just beside the bone carving he’s sure is from Rost.

“You’re gonna wear it anyway,” he says, because she said she needs it. “But I thought it would be good to have some place more secure than the ground-”

He can’t talk anymore, because she’s kissing him with startling violence.

He honestly hasn’t thought about her reaction beyond a desperate hope he wasn’t overreaching, but then she’s pushing him onto the couch, and _oh,_ this is definitely okay.

Fire and spit, she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

There are knotted scars up and down her stomach and ribs, but they’ve been over and over this. He swallows back the swell of blank horror and focuses on the warmth of her mouth and the way her hands sink into the hair at his jaw.

“You don’t want anyone to watch us,” she murmurs against his neck.

“Neither do you,” he points out, and it would be far more endearing if his voice didn’t pitch up half an octave as her hand slides across his hip. She’s more relaxed than he’s possibly ever seen her, languid heat and blinding light, and he’s _helpless_ in the face of it.

She leans back, a tiny smirk playing at her lips as she casually tugs his overshirt from his waistband.

The words pop out before he can stop them. “You don’t have to-”

“Don’t make my decisions for me,” she retorts, and then her hand’s beneath the fabric, the skin of her palm warm against his belly, and he forgets how to breathe. “Unless,” she adds, suddenly worried, “this isn’t okay?”

It’s okay. It’s _so_ okay. It’s so far _past_ okay, but if he tries to say anything, he’s going to burst into tears, because this is Aloy, the pretty girl from the middle of nowhere who just happens to be the person who single-handedly saved the world, and he’s honestly _never_ thought that she’d actually touch him like this-

He thinks wildly that she might even be the first person to really touch him at all, to ever even _look_ at him like this: warm and hesitant, concerned but not for herself. He’s never realized it until just now, and the enormity of it crushes the air from his lungs.

She slices him down to the bone every time. She hits him in the kidneys without any effort, without even _knowing._

“I love you,” he croaks.

“That’s not an answer.” She tugs at his head to meet her eyes. Her other hand is still burning against his stomach.

“Just...give me a second.” If Charming Oaf weren’t already obliterated, he’d be ash right here under her hand. It's not the first time Erend’s been with a woman, not by a long shot, but fire and spit, it might as well be.

He wants her. He’s wanted her for _months_ , his blood shrilling in her presence, but now her eyes are soft, glowing coals above a rich expanse of pale skin, and he is so very, very not ready.

He might _never_ be ready.

“Erend?” Her voice is quiet.

“You...” He can't say she kills him. He can't say he's dying with every breath because that's the one thing she's most afraid of. He doesn't know how to tell her that he's a moth diving into her flame with wings open and aching to burn. He can't tell her she's blistering away everything he’d thought was important, burning away a lifetime of what he sees now is useless slag. He can’t tell her that he still can’t fully comprehend her place in the chaos of the world, but he _knows_ he can’t comprehend, and the weight of what he doesn’t know crushes him just as much as the blaze of her hair.

“You're so _beautiful_ ,” he says instead, and puts his hand on top of her own.

She rocks up onto her knees, taking his mouth in her own. She kisses him until he starts to relax, and then she keeps kissing until the embers flare bright and wild.

When he shrugs off his shirt, he wants to collapse in on himself, but she's staring with such hungry wonder, he's too paralyzed to move.

He fumbles for something to say. “The, uh. Hair. Keeps a man warm in the Claim-”

Her hand moves up his chest, her fingers winnowing through the dark curls. “...I’ve wondered what it would be like to touch you,” she whispers.

He shudders, choking back the hard knot in his throat. “Not disappointed, are you?”

She smirks and her fingers _tighten_ , and suddenly, he doesn't care about anything but the pressure. She can do whatever she wants, and he'll be right there with her.

She puts her mouth back at his shoulder, and then the silks flow off her powerful shoulders to puddle at her waist.

He doesn’t know where to put his hands. He wants to put them _everywhere_. He wants to know every inch of her. He wants to learn her with his hands and mouth and eyes. He wants to study her like the Carja study the sun, squinting and crying at its brilliance but unable to look away.

There’s bare skin against bare skin, the warmth of her as she moves up against him. She’s delicious weight and impossible heat. She’s light and life and the melting core of the hottest forge.

He doesn’t have to go any further. If he dies in this moment, if he dies mapping the contours of her body with his unworthy hands, it’ll be the greatest and most honorable death he’s never dreamed he could have. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of thinking I may need to up the rating. According to [the Envelope Protocol](http://tinsnip.tumblr.com/post/94902447909/okay-so-im-actually-about-to-write-a-porn-fic) things are heading that way (if they're not solidly there already).


	38. Chapter 38

The days turn into a blur of feverish want.

The world intercedes, because of course it does. In addition to Erend’s usual duties, there are also the potential Vanguard recruits that Tandin and Adar are still quietly evaluating. The Vanguard is almost half of what it once was, but they’re needed twice as much. The royal wedding has been announced for the summer solstice, just under a year away, but in the meantime, Erend has to figure out exactly what that means for him and his men, and plan contingencies for the inevitable chaos the event will cause. He spends long hours talking with Adar, Marad, and the Carja garrison commander; he’s trying to make up for all the time he spent drunk instead of learning, but he’s pretty sure even Ersa never faced anything like this.

He’s starting to realize that Ersa never faced a lot of the things he’s done. She’d escaped the Sun Ring and brought Avad to the Oseram, and then headed the push to regain Meridian. Erend helped stop the end of the world, and now he's working to rebuild the things that were broken.

He’s never felt the need to compete with Ersa - not when she spent most of her life dragging him out of one scrape or another - but there’s a bit of smug pride there.

Aloy is deep in the middle of some opaque research. She’s spent time poring through records at the Hunters Lodge. Avad’s given her free reign over the palace archives, and Erend is absolutely certain Aloy has somehow wheedled her way into the Sun Priests’ inner sanctum. He comes back to the apartment to find her sitting on the floor, swiping at empty air as she works on her Focus, six weighty tomes arrayed around her.

He starts making sure he brings home something for her to eat, because if he doesn’t, she’s just going to forget.

Still.

He pulls her out of her books and she pulls him from his patrols. There are a lot of things that aren't technically sex. There's a lot of touching and a lot of skin. Boundaries are tentatively explored. Edges are established and tugged back, the way she tugs him out of his sleeves when he can’t stop kissing her long enough to do it himself.

Mouths move. Hands creep into secret places. The first time he dares to touch her, she immediately comes apart. It's nothing, the barest movement, but the sound she makes hooks into his brain like the butt of his axe.

When she returns the favor, he loses his mind.

He’s a man who knows his drink and the howl in its absence; he’s more drunk on her than he’s ever been, and he has no intention of ever, _ever_ being sober.

 

****

 

He’s a man who knows his drink, and one afternoon, he finds one under the bed.

It’s in his hands before he can stop himself, and suddenly he can’t remember what he was looking for in the first place. The shock wax seal is broken, the contents half gone. It’s months old, but it’s still a bottle of sharp, golden Oseram brew, and now it’s in his hands.

It’s been a bad day. He’d tried sparring with Tandin and ended up spraining just about everything on his bad leg from his ankle to his groin. He’s a soldier who’s still having a hell of a time getting back into fighting shape. He _hurts_ and he’s irritable, and now he has a bottle of alcohol.

He can almost _taste_ it, and fire and spit, he’s never wanted anything more in his entire life.

It would be _so_ easy-

He doesn’t drink it.

Just a little. Just a taste. Just enough to wet his lips, enough to remember the flavor-

No one's going to know. It's such a small amount. It's a shame to waste it.

He _can't._

He's his father's son. This wasn't going to last anyway. He's an idiot for trying, and this is fate reminding him of everything he isn't.

He doesn’t know how he gets to the stairs, and he doesn’t know how long he sits there, but when Aloy comes home, there he is, paralyzed on the bottom step, the bottle clutched in numb fingers.

“I didn’t-” he croaks, trying to head off the wild blaze of her anger.

“What are you doing.” It’s not a question, because the situation speaks for itself, and she’s right to be angry, she’s absolutely _right_ -

He can’t do this. He’s managed to stop himself from opening it and he’s managed to stop himself from putting it to his mouth, but he’s shaking with the effort. “Help me.” It’s the most miserable thing he’s ever said, and he hates himself so much right now, both for not drinking it and for _wanting_ to. “Please.”

“What am I doing?” She’s still on the edge of anger, slowly coming forward like he’s a Watcher she’s preparing to pacify.

“ _Take_ it.” He’s been locked inside himself for longer than he knows, but she’s broken his concentration, and now he _really_ can’t do this.

She moves without hesitation. She takes the bottle out of his hands and goes to the toilet, and he hears the steady glug of emptying liquid.

When it’s gone, he lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and then his head is between his knees, all the air rushing back into his lungs in huge, shuddery gasps.

Her hand clenches in his hair, her forehead against his; she’s smelling his breath as much as giving him comfort, and he _hates_ that, but he deserves it. He’d told her he was going to fuck up, and he _hasn’t_ , but she shouldn’t trust him. He doesn’t trust himself.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks. “I’m so sorry.”

“What would you have done if I wasn’t here?” she asks quietly.

“I don’t know.” He can’t rely on her for his sobriety. He _can’t_ , but he just did, and the shame is choking him, hot and thick. “I found it under the bed. I swear I didn’t know it was there. I _didn’t_.”

She gets up, brushing her fingers over her Focus, and walks around the apartment, opening drawers and patting under furniture. It’s a thorough, methodical search, and it turns up two additional bottles, both empty, tucked in forgotten corners.

He absolutely resents her right now, but he's never been more grateful that she's here.

“I paid everyone off,” he says hoarsely. “There isn’t a tavern or merchant in the whole damn city that’ll sell to me.”

She doesn’t say anything. He'd have found a way. He can be _very_ charming.

“...I’d have drank it.” Fire and spit, it’s an admission he doesn’t want to make, but it’s the truth, ugly and raw. He’d have held out for a few hours, but it was a bottle in his house, a bottle in his hands, and he’s his father’s son. There’s only one way it could end.

“Erend…” Her face twists in sympathy.

“I told you,” he says dully. “I _told_ you-”

The next thing he knows, she’s sitting next to him and pulling him against her, tucking his head under her chin.

He isn't crying. There has to be another reason why his face is hot and wet. He knows he's not making any noise. His throat is welded shut, and there isn't any air in the entire world.

When she kisses him, she puts both hands on his face and breathes him in like she’s trying to pull the poison from his bones.

He wishes it were that easy. He really, really does. He’d do anything for a pretty girl, and Aloy is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

 

****

 

It’s almost predictable. He’s had her body wrapped around him for weeks, warm and sweet, and the heat of her chases away the demons in his head. Tonight, not even Aloy can help him: as soon as he’s asleep, he’s locked in ice as his head swims, his body soaked in alcohol that his mouth never tasted.

Erend is his father’s son, and he’s also his father. He knows how to take a hit and he knows how to land one. There’s blood on his knuckles and copper-bright hair in his fists, a heart-stopping horror he can’t control and can’t erase. He only comes out of it when Aloy shoves him off the edge of the bed. He barely makes it to the toilet before he’s puking, and as hard as he tries, as hard as his body clenches over and over again, he still can’t get rid of the cancer in his bloodline.

He doesn’t know how long he’s there, drenched in cold sweat and slumped on the floor, but she’s in the doorway, a cup of water in her hands. It’s the same position he’s found himself in so many times, a miserable hell he’s made for himself, and with a stab of furious shame, he wants her to just fucking _leave_.

“You need to go,” he croaks. “You need to-”

“Don’t make my decisions for me,” she says quietly.

“It’s not _about_ decisions! It’s _me_ -”

She stares at him, steady and braced for whatever comes next.

He can’t hurt her. She doesn’t understand that if he takes her hits, he’s giving his body to the best cause he knows. If he’s between her and something that’s trying to hurt her, maybe he can avoid hurting her himself.

Neither of them move for a long time, and finally, she comes to sit just out of reach, sliding the cup towards him. “I want to be here,” she says, her voice soft against the hollow stone.

“I’m-” he’s choking on the words, the bile swollen and hot in his mouth. “I’m never _not_ going to be like my father-”

“You’re not your father,” she says. “I watch you not being him every day.”

“I told you, this is never going to go away-”

She swallows hard, and her eyes are sharp, mottled ore. “I don’t think I am, either,” she says, almost so quiet that he can't even hear.

It takes a moment for her words to go from his ears into his head. “You-”

“You heard me.”

He knows what this means for her, and his head spins.

He drinks the water she’s offered. He gets to his feet. He goes back to bed, and when she lays her head on his chest, he buries his fingers in her hair.

He’s got the love of a woman he doesn’t deserve, and the trust of a king. He’s his father’s son, but he’s more than his father ever was. He just has to prove it.

 

****

Days later, she’s sitting on the floor, three books spread out in front of her as she pokes at invisible glyphs. It looks like she's trying to brush away spider silk.

“I need to go to the Cauldron,” Aloy says without looking up. “I need to see if there's a mainframe I can access."

“A what now?”

“It programs what kind of machines are made.” She swipes left and then peers at one of the books. “The nearest one is about two days south of here. Last time I was there, it was full of Eclipse cultists.”

Erend's absolutely sure there aren’t any Eclipse left, and he’s also absolutely sure she’s the reason why.

“Cauldron,” he repeats. “That’s…”

“You can’t come with me,” she says bluntly, and then her face softens. “It’s solid jungle and it's full of machines.”

He’s getting better. Yeah, Tandin keeps putting him on his ass, but Erend’s figuring out how to compensate for his bad leg. He made it to Sunfall and back without dying, and that was _weeks_ ago. Besides, he's far more comfortable with damp jungle heat than baking desert. “I could-”

The look she gives him is exasperated and fond. “You can walk fine, you’re just _noisy_. You’d be Stalker food in an hour.”

She’s probably not wrong, but that doesn’t stop the bloom of anxiety in his chest.

 

****

 

That night, he kisses her like he’s never going to see her again. He can’t go with her, but he can fortify her, as if she can somehow absorb his love through her skin.

He tongues his way down her body, and drops his mouth to the hot, slick part of her. She's bright and sharp and sweet, and if he's not drinking from her, he's holding the taste in his memory.

When it's over and they're both trembling and boneless, she rolls against him. “A week,” she mumbles into his armpit. “It’s only a week.”

“Tell me you won't miss me,” he retorts.

She lifts her head, her eyes soft as moss. “I'd never say that.”

His throat is suddenly painfully tight, and he presses his face into her hair

Fire and spit, he's so in love.


	39. Chapter 39

It’s the longest week of his life, but when the seventh day goes dark, he starts to worry.

On the sixteenth day, he’s ready to die.

 

****

 

The only reason he doesn’t drink is because she could come back at any second, and he absolutely doesn’t want to be drunk for that. He doesn’t want to disappoint her. He doesn’t want to prove his bloodline right.

He really, really wants a drink

Erend throws himself even harder into his duty to Avad, because his home and his chest are painfully empty, and he feels like he's on the precipice of an endless collapse. He'd survived a week. He did  _not_ agree to any longer.

He knows how the jungle can be endless and murky. He knows that Aloy can disappear into tall grass without disturbing the tiny glowing sparks that hover amid the leaves. He knows she can pacify a Ravager and, even if the thought makes his guts go to water, he knows she can take down a Thunderjaw. She's strong and smart, and she travels faster alone.

He knows all of these things, but it doesn't calm the discordant whine of anxiety in his bones, a poorly-struck anvil that rings far longer than physical sound.

Then, it becomes a month. He thinks of the voice in her ear. He thinks of blood on her face and the taste of her mouth in his.

He loses track of the days. He doesn’t fall into ruin, and he’s distantly surprised. He walks his patrols. He interviews the potential new recruits, and decides all five are worth probationary training. He meets with Avad, and finds himself correcting Itamen’s posture when the boy stands with a toy bow.

Mostly, he stays tucked in the back of his own head.

Olin’s house is still empty. There’s a series of break-ins in that district, and Erend investigates. The culprit is the resentful daughter of a failed merchant, and she’s remanded into Carja custody for trial. Olin’s front door is still bolted in place, the hinges awkwardly repaired from that night two years ago when Erend put his foot through the wood.

The house is untouched. A thick layer of dust covers everything, the oil in the lamps gone sticky and dark. Erend walks through the rooms, stale air heavy in his mouth. The basement hatch is still shattered, and if he stands at the edge, he can look up at the loft and almost see Aloy’s smirking shrug.

He wanders down into the basement.

The map is still on the wall, marked with Carja glyphs. Erend stares at the characters. Aloy had known what they said, and she hadn’t even needed her Focus.

Fire and spit, he misses her.

 

****

  


The idea doesn’t actually occur to him until much later. He’s leaning against a wall in the palace, idly watching Itamen sitting on the steps with his tutor. The boy’s losing the pudginess of childhood, his body starting to awkwardly stretch its way to the tall man he'll eventually become.

Avad might be the Sun King, Erend thinks to himself, but in a few years, his little brother will be breaking every heart in the Sundom.

“What’s this say?” Itamen says, twisting toward Erend to point to a page in his book.

Erend recognizes some of the glyphs, but not enough to actually parse the word. “Hell if I know, kid.”

“Don’t swear,” the boy says automatically.

“My apologies, your Radiance.” He affects just enough fond insolence to win himself a shy grin, and the boy turns back to his studies.

When he’d first arrived, Itamen was welded to his mother’s side, and refused to even go near any of the palace guards. In the year since his return, the prince still doesn’t speak to any of the Carja, but the Vanguard have been gradually deemed to be a lesser threat. It’s not anything that Erend and Avad have explicitly discussed, but Erend’s made sure there’s always at least one Vanguardsman loitering in Itamen’s general vicinity. It seems to help.

Most of the time, the task falls to someone else, but any afternoon Erend gets to spend idly sharpening his axe is a much-enjoyed treat.

He almost doesn’t dream about it anymore, but in the few nightmares he’s had, Itamen’s hair is the bright color of fresh copper.

Today, as the boy listens to his tutor, Avad’s stepmother makes a rare appearance, coming up to stand stiffly at Erend’s side.

“Sunfall was difficult for him,” Nasadi says out of nowhere. Erend thinks it might be the first time she’s actually spoken to him. He thinks it might even be the first time he’s heard her speak at all. “He saw many things no child - not even a prince - should ever be forced to see.”

“He seems better.” It's as neutral a statement as he can make. Erend knows all about things children shouldn't see, and he knows exactly how that turns out. 

“Your men help,” Nasadi murmurs.

“We’re good at being big and scary,” Erend says, “but only to the right people.”

“It is appreciated.”

“Kid’s not the only one to have a murderous bung for a father.” He doesn’t realize he’s said it out loud until Nasadi abruptly stares. Erend quickly backtracks. “Apologies. Not my place.”

“Jiran was a good man once,” Nasadi says softly. “He lost much of himself.”

“People always say things like that.” It’s way over the line, but he hooks his thumbs behind his belly plate. “Doesn’t change the way it went.”

“No,” the mad king’s widow agrees, after a moment of silence. “It doesn’t.” Her eyes flick across Erend’s face. “I thank you for my son’s protection, but we will not speak of this again.”

As she walks away, Erend thinks to himself that yeah, maybe it’s the last time Nasadi speaks of it, but someday, Itamen’s going to have questions. He’s going to have to come to terms with the man his father became. He’s going to have to make a decision about what kind of man he himself is going to be.

Erend knows painfully well that it’s not going to be one decision. It’s going to be the same decision over and over and over again. He desperately hopes it’s easier for Itamen.

 

****

 

Later that afternoon, Itamen brings the book back to Erend. “Mountain,” he says triumphantly.

“Good work.”

“Why didn’t you know that? Isn’t…” the prince considers. “Isn’t the Claim full of mountains.”

“Claim’s full of lots of things,” Erend says easily. “Just not many glyphs.”

“Reading is very important.” Itamen is suddenly grave. “You should know.”

It’s a skill he’s honestly never considered. “You think?”

The boy nods. “Marad says knowledge is power.”

“What, I’m not already powerful enough?” He’s not Charming Oaf, but he knows how to make this kid smile. “Look, Inquisitive Whatsisname is getting annoyed. Humor him for a bit, eh?”

Itamen scrambles back to his tutor, but that doesn't mean his words don't strike a chord in Erend's steel.

 

****

 

Ersa always said knowledge was the sharpest weapon, and Erend’s understood that in the context of battle. He knows how to figure out the mechanics of a fight and he’s learning to invest in preparation. He’s his father’s son, but he’s working on being more. Violence has been the scaffold for his entire life, but if he’s rebuilding his own foundation, he needs to rebuild how he thinks as well.

Erend’s been in Meridian long enough that he knows the shape of his own name and a few important sigils, but not much more. There isn’t a need for glyphs among the Oseram; merchants each have their own way of keeping inventory, and the ealdormen keep long memories. Erend’s from a failed clan, and he’s a soldier. He’s never had the need, but he thinks of Aloy sitting amid carefully compiled knowledge, and...if nothing else, it’ll keep him occupied until she comes back.

He won’t say _if_ she comes back.

 

****

 

There’s a book house near the Hunters Lodge. He’s seen it, but he’s had no reason to go inside.

Well, if everyone’s going to stare, he might as well just _do_ it.

He walks in with anxiety coating his tongue like dust, and walks out with a children’s primer.

 

****

 

It’s actually more fun that he’s expected.

He’s brute force and solid muscle. He’s working on being clever, but it’s not something that’s folded into his steel, and it still feels like boots that aren’t completely broken in. He’d thought he’d just put his head down and pound away at this like a training dummy, but it isn’t like that at all.

It’s a puzzle. He knows how to track an opponent and decide where best to hit. He knows the strong points and weak points on both man and machine. Sounds are the same, the hard and soft points, the glyphs rendering speech into a map.

If he has a question, he makes a point to ask Itamen. He remembers learning his axe, and how none of the lessons really sank in until he’d had to show them to someone else. Once, he catches Avad’s eye, and the Sun King gives an infinitesimal nod of approval.

Erend doesn’t need confirmation. He already knows what he’s doing is something he should have started to do years ago.

“Cap, the hell are you _doing?_ ” Kip finally asks.

Erend’s sitting at the command post, primer by his side and a slateboard in his lap, his bad leg stretched out in the pleasant evening heat. “Dervahl took notes, didn't he? If we weren’t all meatheads, maybe we'd have found him sooner.”

Maybe they could have saved Ersa. It makes for a sober silence.

“Well,” Kip finally says. “When you put it that way…” He plops down beside Erend. “You gonna start holding classes?”

 

****

 

“First you inspire them to curtail the drinking,” Adar says in passing. “Now, you’ve made _reading_ the latest fad.”

“What can I say?” Erend shrugs, not bothering hide a satisfied grin. “Bravest men in or out of the Claim. Soon, also the smartest.”

Adar just shakes his head. “Ersa did a lot,” he says. “She couldn’t have done this.”

Erend isn’t Ersa, but he’s never thought of it in the reverse. Erend isn’t Ersa, and Ersa wasn’t Erend. She’d known enough glyphs to communicate with the Carja during the war, but she hadn’t passed the knowledge down to her men, and they’d never been inspired to seek it out for themselves. She’d been the clever one, and it hadn’t occurred to her or anyone that that power could be shared.

The longer he’s sober, the more Erend realizes that Ersa had been invested in her identity - _trapped_ in her identity - as much as he’s been. Being clever served her well, just like being alone has served Aloy, like being able to take a hit has served Erend.

They’re all more than they’ve been. He’s just sad Ersa isn’t here to understand that.

 

****

 

It’s been a month and a half. An Oseram trader coming from the east mentions she’d stayed the night at Day’s Height, and seen a red-haired Nora passing through, but couldn’t remember exactly when.

Aloy had been looking for a Cauldron to the south. Day’s Height is northeast of Meridian. Erend doesn’t know those roads as well as he’d like, but he _knows_ the most direct route would have take her within an hour of Meridian. It would have been even less on one of her inexplicable mounts.

He can’t breathe.

“Did I say Day’s Height?” The trader scratches her head. “I meant Daytower. Those Carja and their rusting sun, right?”

“There’s a huge difference,” Erend snaps. One means that Aloy had been within a day’s walk to Meridian, and she’d chosen not to come back. The other means she’d skirted the mountains and gone straight into the Embrace.

He means to be big and scary, and for one moment, he swells into the biggest and scariest he’s ever been. “Daytower!” the trader gulps. “Definitely Daytower! The mountains! The snow!”

She’d gone directly to the Embrace.

“Cap?” Tandin asks quietly. “What are you thinking?”

He’s thinking she’d found something in the Cauldron to the south, and whatever it was, she’d wasted no time in heading north. He would bet every shard to his name that there’s another Cauldron in the Embrace or close to it, and if there’s not, there’s another Ancient facility that urgently requires her attention.

He's not sure he wants to know what she's looking for. He remembers the battle on the Spire, of covering her with his body as rockets exploded around them. He remembers waking up in the clinic and not having her there, of not  _knowing_. He remembers the way she searched for him as she crossed the bridge, the way their eyes locked like a heavy gear falling against its mate. 

In the place under Sunfall, the flickering light of the Ancient scholars explained the subroutines. HADES was meant to destroy the world, and Aloy defeated HADES at the Spire. The other subroutines all seemed innocuous, but if she'd pushed hard for the Embrace, maybe she'd found something that changed all that. 

She'd taken him into the Ancient facility. She'd stood beside him as people long-dead explained how the world was pulled from its grave. She'd wanted him to know, and he has to believe that if he can help her, she won't hold back.

“We hold until we hear otherwise,” Erend says, gritting his teeth. “Let’s get to it.”

 


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bumped up the rating. Happy Monday! ~squid

The rainy season is over, and the sun hits with a vengeance. There’s been a hard push to rebuild the irrigation channels so the newly-planted crops don’t wither in the winter drought, but the work still isn’t done.

“Captain,” the Sun King says, coming up to clasp Erend’s shoulder. “How is the city?”

“Calm,” Erend confirms. “I sent a handful of men to help the stonemasons by the southern gate.” His men ache for their fallen brothers; the grief never eases, but simple, hard lifting is a good task. Erend’s gone down there himself, putting his back against the rubble. At the end of the day, he’s too exhausted to even dream, falling hard against a pillow that still contains the faint scent of her skin.

“And you, my friend?” Avad asks quietly.

 _Lonely,_  Erend wants to say. He hadn’t realized how much she’d filled up the apartment - how much she’d made it a home not through any deliberate action, but by the simple fact of her existence - until she’s not in it.

She’s come back before, and they’d barely known each other. She has to come back this time. He’d said he’d wait, but he misses her so much every second is torture. He keeps trying to build that solid place in his chest, a base of belief and strength to keep him fortified until he can press his face in her hair again.

It almost works, until the moment he wakes up and she’s not there. The emptiness is _crushing_ , but even if Avad should have been Erend’s brother-in-law, he’s still his king.

“There’s a lot to do,” Erend says instead. “It’ll get done.”

There’s a moment of quiet, Avad weighing his next words. “Your attention to my brother is gratifying,” he finally says.

“He’s a good kid.”

“This is for your ears only,” Avad says, “but when Talanah and I are married, Itamen will be named heir.”

There’s a sharp flush of protective anger. “He’s too young to put that on him.”

Avad raises an eyebrow. “His blood dictates otherwise.”

“But…” Erend’s flailing. His job is to serve Avad’s interests, not argue, but he can’t stop his mouth from speaking. “Your kids - I mean-”

“There will be a line of succession,” the Sun King agrees. “But Itamen is my first choice. Simple politics state that having Itamen as the king-in-waiting will be an appeal to the Carja-in-Shadow, and I must mend the rift in my people any way I can.”

“You think he’d want to be king? After everything he had to do in Sunfall?”

Avad inclines his head. “I’ve spoken with him, both with my stepmother present and without. He knows what he was told in Sunfall, and I offered my own narrative.”

Erend frowns. “He’s a kid. You can’t put all this on him-”

“He’s a prince,” Avad says firmly. “We are groomed for this from the very moment our mothers know our presence. Naming him as heir doesn’t obligate him to take the throne. My own children will be next in line, and if Itamen chooses to step aside or abdicate, the Sundom will not be leaderless.” More gently, he adds, “My duty as a king is to prepare an heir. My duty as a brother is to guide Itamen to adulthood as best I can.”

Erend suddenly remembers lying the clinic, the Nora stitcher Teb recounting how Aloy saved his life:  _s_ _he wasn’t even six._  At six, Itamen had been the puppet king of the Shadow Carja.

At six, Erend was still small and underfed, cowering in a corner with Ersa as their parents screamed at each other.

Erend had Ersa, and Aloy had Rost, but it wasn’t enough. They’re still grinding at each other, working like whetstone and blade to smooth out damage that probably won’t ever be fully repaired. It’s hard and it hurts, and Erend will do absolutely anything he can to make sure that Itamen doesn’t suffer the same fate.

“We are neither of us men like our fathers,” Avad says quietly.

“Maybe not,” Erend says, “but we’ll spend our entire lives saying that.”

Their fathers still define who they are. Everything Erend will ever be - soldier, captain, maybe even helpmeet for the hearth he doesn’t dare hope to kindle - will always be in direct contrast to his father. Everything Avad is, the change he’s brought, the leadership he provides: all of it can be boiled down to not-Jiran, and there are many people who will never see Avad as anything else.

“We are our own men,” Avad says, and turns to meet Erend’s eye. “We are more than the forge that struck us.”

Erend huffs. “Ersa told you that.”

“She was not wrong.”

“No, she wasn’t.”

They stare out at the city laid out below them, the placid river coated in shimmering dusk. “Once, you fought me on this,” Avad says.

“Still fighting you,” Erend says. “Just...not out loud.”

He nods agreeably. “You don’t have to tell a king that progress is slow.”

No, Erend supposes he doesn’t.

 

****

 

There’s been some disagreement between the Meridian garrison and the Carja guards stationed in some of the outlying areas. It’s not a Vanguard issue, but Erend puts on his most disarming smile and refuses to go away.

The city commander is about as emotive as the stones he patrols, but for once, his frosty reception is directed toward his counterpart from Lone Light. Erend won’t _say_ his presence helps, but the negotiation does go faster than expected. At the end, the city commander doesn’t quite thank him, but doesn’t quite scowl either.

When it’s over, it’s still early in the afternoon. Erend’s there anyway, so he checks with the Vanguardsmen posted at the northern gate. There are still refugees streaming in from the western Sundom; they might be Shadow Carja, but first, they’re hungry and exhausted, and any problems have been quietly resolved.

Eddic is leader of the watch, and he leans on his axe. “Busy,” the Vanguardsman reports, “but nothing worth mentioning.”

“I’m almost disappointed,” Erend says. “You guys’ll get soft.”

Eddic laughs. “Not the way you push us, Cap.”

One of the southern elevators is finally fixed well enough for light use, and it takes a bit of the pressure off the one at the north gate. Erend’s discussing an appropriate patrol split when Eddic suddenly grabs his shoulder, and spins him toward the bridge.

Whatever he was saying drops completely out of Erend’s head.

Amid the steady crowd, there’s a familiar flag of copper-bright hair, and his heart shudders to a stop.

There was the moment on the Spire when she’d come back from the dead, and the moment in the elevator where she’d come back from the Nora, and right now, she’s coming back to _him_. The bridge becomes nothing, the distance swallowed between them, and then his face is in her hair and her arms are wrapped around his neck so tightly he almost can’t breathe.

She smells like everything he loves, hard travel and sharp herbs and the tantalizing musk of her skin. He can’t let go of her long enough to kiss her, because it’s been thirty-seven days and he’s shaking so hard he can’t feel his legs.

Aloy pulls away first, her hands gripping his sleeves.  “I know I’m late,” she says breathlessly. “I’m so sorry. I can-”

“I don’t _care-_ ” and then he swallows the words from her mouth because he thought he’d never get to taste her again.

She’s alive. She’s here, she’s _here,_ and he is _never_ letting her go. “Erend, I’m so sorry,” she repeats. “I had to see-”

“I know you did,” he tells her, his fingers still buried in her hair. “You had to go. It’s okay-”

“I came back,” she says.

He pulls her back against his chest. Her hair, her hair is in his mouth and his nose and his eyes. He can’t talk anymore. He doesn’t care who’s watching. He doesn’t care who sees.

When he can breathe properly, he looks her over. “You’re not bleeding this time, are you?”

“No. Not this time.” Aloy searches his face. “And you - you’re not-”

“Not drunk,” he confirms. “...so we’re good on all fronts.”

She laughs and hops on her toes to kiss him again.

“Welcome back, Aloy!” Eddic calls out with a grin, and she ducks her head against Erend’s chest, a pleasant blush settling into her ears.

 

****

 

“What do you need?” Erend asks. “We can go find Marad, or-”

“Home,” she says firmly. “We should go home.”

She’s calling it _home_ , and the way she says it goes straight through his body like blaze.

He is _definitely_ not opposed.

When they get there, she carefully places her weapons down, and then consideration and her blouse get thrown aside, her mouth hot and urgent against his. His belly plate clatters to the floor, and she works at the ties of his gambeson. He fumbles with the knots at her belt, pouches and potions dropping around their feet.

This feels like the second wind in a battle, a flood of heat that starts in his bones and boils out into his flesh.  

He kicks off his boots, and _oh,_  he wants this. He wants _her._  He can _smell_ her, the sharp herbal spice of her hair, the darker musk of her body. She tugs his shirt out of his waistband, and then his hands are on skin, so much skin, a perfect swath of freckles like sparks rising out of flame.

She stops at the foot of the bed to to shimmy out of her leathers. “I’ve been waiting _weeks_ for this,” she breathes, and pushes him back into the pillows.

Fire and spit, so has he.

Clothes come off, and then she's against him, hot and perfect and agonizingly slick.

He wants to be inside her more than anything he's ever wanted. He wants to be inside her, needs to be inside her, _fire and spit he may actually be dying_ , and then one of them moves just enough, and she’s _around_ him-

There's a long, frozen moment where they both stop breathing.

Whatever it is, it's _definitely_ not indecision.  

They both move at once. He's thrusting in and she's grinding down, and _this is a thing that's happening_ and then he stops being able to think at all. There's nothing except the heat of her, the weight of her, the wild tangle of her hair taking him over in a blaze of light.

He's so close to the edge already. She's a blinding shower of sparks and then she's clenching _hard_ , howling into his shoulder and clawing at his back, and he's _gone._

Of all the things Erend doesn't expect, he's never expected this. He's imagined and hoped and hated himself for wanting, but he's never, _never_ expected, and now she's around him, overwhelming him, slumped against him and taking short, surprised breaths against the tender skin under his jaw.

She’s here. She’s _here._   

“I missed you,” she finally says.

He thinks he makes some vague noise of stunned agreement.

He is _so_ in love.

 

****

 

She falls asleep almost immediately, hard travel dropping her where she lies, and he can’t bring himself to move. They’re a comfortable tangle of arms and legs, the smell of her thick in his lungs, and he never wants to be anywhere else. Idly, he traces the confident ridge of her spine up into her hair, sinking his hand into the heavy tangle of braids and beads. There’s dust on his tongue from her skin and a few wayward twigs tangled by her ear.

She is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

Long before he’d known her power, she’d blown him open like a jar of blaze tucked into the cage of his ribs. She sees things that no one else can see, and she’d seen things in _him_ he hadn’t known existed. He’d resented and craved it all at the same time.

He's starting to realize the moth might be held captive, but it's not powerless. The moth can't resist the heat and light, but it _can_ beat its wings to help the flame grow. Gravity can be an inescapable trap or a solid foundation, and he knows exactly which one he wants.

Flame and moth, moth and flame. Tall grass and hard steel, brute force and distant precision.

She is-

She’s drooling on his shoulder, actually. She’s naked and asleep and drooling, and it’s so fucking _perfect_ that he never, ever wants this moment to end.

 

****

 

At some point, he falls asleep himself, and when he dreams, like always, it's Aloy. This time, though, there’s no blood, no horror, only the sweet slide of her body against his own. It’s not even erotic, just muscles releasing the memory of action, and he relaxes into it, floating and free.

In the liminal space just below wakefulness, he feels her move, and then she’s _there,_  the dream come alive. It’s slow and languid, and he knows where to put his hands, where to put his mouth. He feels like they’ve practiced this a dozen times but never actually gotten here. It’s the first swing of an axe in battle, the first leap across a river, the first machine felled after years of straw dummies. She uncovers him, surrounds him, _obliterates_ him, and all he can do is rock helplessly against her, her name the only sound in his throat.

They fall from an impossible height, but it’s not the finish. He will never be finished. She’s already everything he’s ever going to want, but new possibility stretches out before him as deep and endless as the sky.

“I love you,” he breathes.

Her lips are warm at the corner of his mouth, and in the darkness, he can feel her grin.


	41. Chapter 41

Of all the things Erend doesn't expect, Aloy isn't just one among many. She's first. She's everything.

He doesn't want to get up. He doesn't ever want to leave this bed. If his heart stops in his chest, if he dies right here, it will be all he's ever wanted.

It _keeps_ being like this. She keeps being more and more than he could ever imagine, and he doesn't dare hope. He’s taking a risk even _breathing_ , but his lungs expand on their own.

He'd never believed he could get sober. If he wasn't granted the mercy of a soldier's death, he'd resigned himself to stumbling twenty or thirty blurry years toward a sagging, sallow end. He's his father's son, the poison vines deeply wound around his bones, and it seemed inevitable.

Aloy blows him open. She leaves him staggered and stunned, the blinding flash of a Watcher’s sun-sharp blow. His life is a long, hard fight, and he has no delusion that his struggle will ever be over. It's a war he has to wage for the rest of his days, but she's given him a banner. She's given him a cause.

She's bludgeoned him into being his own cause.

When the sun breaks over the horizon, a flashpoint that promises a blistering day, he's mostly awake, caught in a comfortable lassitude.

“Should get up,” Aloy mumbles, making no effort to move.

He should. He should at least go check with Adar and Tandin. At the _very_ least, he needs to pee.

He doesn't bother to put on his gambeson. Even his trousers and shirt feel like the worst betrayal, but he's the captain, so he makes himself do it anyway.

He finds Tandin and three others at a bench at the command post, hunched over a primer and scrawling unsteady chalk letters on the tabletop.

“Getting further than I am,” Erend says.

“Go away,” Tandin says without looking up.

“Hey now-”

His third raises his head. “Aloy came in yesterday. Why are you here?”

“I _work_ here-”

“ _Bye_ , Cap,” Tandin says. “We'll let you know if the machines invade.”

Impertinent bungs, the lot of them.

He goes and gets food. Aloy hasn't even shifted, still a loose tangle of copper-bright hair and pale skin. The freckles are thick on her arms and shoulders, floating down the curve of her back like thrown sparks.

She’s the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

“Are you going to give me that, or are you just going to stare?” she says into the pillow.

“Stare,” Erend says. “Definitely stare.”

“Mmkay.”

Eventually, he coaxes her awake with the corn cakes he's brought, and she disappears to bathe. She comes back damp and redolent of the sharp herbs that make him flare like a Watcher, and the rest of the day disappears in the circle of her arms.

 

****

 

At some point, he has to ask. “So. The Cauldron?”

“Didn't have the answers I was looking for,” she says absently. They're still in bed; he's lying on his back just enjoying her presence as she leans against the wall, tapping at empty air.

Fine. She clearly doesn't want to talk about it, but she's been gone for _thirty-seven days_ , and he died every single one of them. If that wasn't enough, she'd shown him the facility beneath Sunfall. She'd trusted him with the knowledge of Elisabet Sobek’s superweapon. He’d bet shards there are only two other people in this world who know more about Zero Dawn than he does, and one is sitting here in front of him with the other in her ear.

He’s brute force. He can handle this. “Aloy,” he gently prompts.

“ _Working_ on it,” she snaps.

Her tone of voice tells him everything he needs to know.

“What are we looking at?” he asks. “How bad?”

“I _said_ I’m working on it, Erend.”

Sometime, strength means holding still, and he can do that, too. He folds his arms beneath his head and waits.

She doesn’t even last ten calm breaths. With an angry huff, she pushes herself to her feet. “Just give me one stupid _minute_ -“

“I didn’t say anything,” he points out.

She stomps around, and finally flops back down next to him, hugging her legs to her chest. He can see the frustration slowly sparking away like a dying Strider. “The Derangement?” he asks quietly.

“Yeah.”

“HEPHAESTUS.”

“Your memory’s good when you’re not drinking.” It’s a low punch, but he lets it pass. The urge to lash out in fear was beaten from his bones before he lost his baby teeth, but he’s big and scary enough that he knows what it looks like in others.

She drops her head down onto her knees. “Why is everything so _hard?_ ” she mumbles. “GAIA thought she’d _fix_ everything by blowing herself up, but she didn’t fix _anything._ She didn’t even try. She made me, and then gave up before the fight even started.”

“Can we fix her?”

“Not without the Cauldrons,” Aloy says. “They can make anything she asks for, but without her, HEPHAESTUS is in control. It makes the machines she’s already asked for, but if humans kill those machines, we become a threat. It makes machines to protect the machines we kill. We kill those machines to protect ourselves, and it comes up with bigger machines. Someday, it’s going to make a machine we can’t kill. We need GAIA to regulate what comes out of the Cauldrons, but anything we do to the Cauldrons is seen as an attack.”

“In order to fix her, she needs to be in control,” Erend says. “And since she’s not, we can’t fix her.”

“I went to every single Cauldron,” she says miserably. “The first time, I overrode the cores and got the…codes…to override the types of machines that each Cauldron makes. I thought I’d overridden the Cauldron itself, but I _didn’t_. I thought since I’d purged HADES from the system, I could purge HEPHAESTUS, but HEPHAESTUS isn’t _in_ the Cauldrons.”

“They’re…cooking pots,” Erend tries. “And you’re looking for the cook.”

“Each Cauldron emits a signal, but I can’t trace it. It dies out. I think it’s just communicating with the machines it makes; when one goes missing, the Cauldron makes another. I didn’t realize it until I started going through Meridian records, but if you look at the maps, when Thunderjaws started appearing, it’s right along major trade routes.”

Erend suddenly can’t breathe, because he hasn't noticed, but she's _right_. “That’s where the most conflict was.” He thinks of the route to Pitchcliff, of the Sawtooths and Ravagers that sliced the link between the Claim and the Sundom. Of course the traders and their escort would kill any machine that threatened them. Of course those machines would start to bring their own backup.

“The Hunters Lodge took down Redmaw,” she says. “I’ve taken out a few. I didn’t realize…I didn’t _think_ doing that would spawn something bigger and more dangerous.”

“Have you seen it?”

“Nothing yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”

“How long? Are we talking days? Weeks? Months?”

“Not days.” She shakes her head. “I don’t think weeks. Meridian records indicate there's a new machine every few years, but GAIA said without her, the subroutines get more and more chaotic. It could happen any time.”

_It's an avalanche, Erend, and one wrong move will destroy everything._

He's from the Claim. He knows about avalanches and mudslides, the way a single crack in barren earth can take down a mountain. “It could escalate quickly.”

“Everyone looked to Elisabet to fix the world,” she mutters. “That’s the first thing Ted Faro did when he realized what he’d done. He called Elisabet and begged for her help. Now _I’m_ here, and it’s exactly the same thing.”

“You’re not Elisabet.”

“I am, though.”

He reaches over, sliding his fingers up through the wild blaze of her hair. “You _aren’t_ ,” he says. “Anything that you figure out, it’s not Elisabet’s solution, it’s _Aloy’s._ ”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t still have to figure it out,” she grumbles.

He pulls her in to kiss her temple. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “You know that.”

“I have no idea what I’m going to do,” she says miserably. “I really, really don’t know.”

“Did you at least get something…?” He gestures to her Focus.

“Some data, yeah.” She scrubs a hand over her face. “I’m still going through it. It doesn’t _mean_ anything right now. It’s – it’s a language I barely speak.

“Does Sylens speak it?”

“I can’t ask,” she admits. “I keep trying, and if he’s even there, he won’t answer.”

“Is there another place you can look?”

“I thought I downloaded everything from Eleuthia, but I don’t know. I’m still looking.”

“We can do this,” he says. “Whatever I can do, tell me. I, um. I’m working on the reading part, but I can definitely _lift_ a stack of books.”

“Reading,” she says.

He feels his ears go red. “You were _gone,_ and I thought _maybe_ -“

He doesn’t know what he means to say, but then her mouth is on his and words are suddenly _very_ unimportant.

 

****

 

Whatever else is going on, there’s Aloy.

He remembers the night with Talanah that blew him wide open, and afterwards all he could think about was a blaze of copper-bright hair. He remembers gripping himself and burning with shame.

This is _nothing_ like that.

In his deepest binge, he's never craved like this, and impossibly, her hunger equals his own. Life intervenes, because of course it does, but every moment they can steal, they're bound together. The agonizing times they're apart, he tortures himself with the smell of her in his moustache. It’s not enough - it’s never enough - but it’s heat and light amid the wild storm of the world.  

He didn't get censured when he'd been staggering through his patrols drunk off his ass. Now, he's staggering through them utterly exhausted and counting the seconds until he's back inside her.

He _definitely_ should be censured now, but everyone else seems to think it's _hilarious_.

“Domestic life treating you well?” Avad asks, and that smug bung manages it with an utterly straight face.

Erend would like very much to give an equally bland reply, but he’s accidentally choking on his own spit.

 

****

He thought she’d spent hours on her Focus before, but now, she almost never moves. She sits on the floor or lies on her back, eyes tracking something he can’t see. “The answer’s _here_ ,” she mutters. “I know it is. It _has_ to be.”

“Come to bed,” he says quietly.

She wakes up in the middle of the night gasping a single word: " _Horus_."She won’t tell him what it means, but she curls in on him, pressing her face into his neck. He wraps himself around her, breathing into her hair until her fingers unclench.

He doesn’t know how to help. He thinks of the rush to defeat HADES, the way she’d disappeared for months at a time. She’d been running then. She’d had a goal, and someone in her ear urging her on. Now, she’s flailing. She doesn’t know where she’s supposed to look. She doesn’t have anyone to guide her, and she’s beating herself bloody trying to figure it out on her own.

She’s smart. She’s the smartest person he’s ever met – maybe even the smartest person alive – and if anyone could solve a problem with the brute force of their brain, all his shards would be on Aloy.

He doesn't know how to help, but he tries anyway. He asks questions. He brings food. He makes a complete nuisance of himself, twining in close and peppering her neck with kisses until she growls in feigned annoyance and pins him to the bed.

****

 

Weeks slide by. They're both _busy_. Meridian has two functional elevators and Erend has half the men he needs. The five recruits show promise, but they aren't Nyler. They aren't Kagget. They aren't Deggerd or Retvek or any of the others lost at the Spire.

“ _F_ _ive_ ,” he says to Adar, scrubbing his hands through the thick stripe of hair at his crown. “We haven't faced anything since the Spire. What do we _do?_ ”

“Run a bigger recruitment?” Adar says.

It's not a good idea. It's logical, but it isn't _good_. Dervahl had looked them all in the eye and tried to turn Meridian to ash. Erend hasn't heard anything from the Claim to confirm that his sister's murderer has finally been executed by the ealdormen, and he _doesn't_ trust that Dervahl doesn't still have allies within the city walls. It's been two years since Ersa was buried, and there's been no further hint of treason, but - Erend doesn't trust. Not when he sometimes still sees Ersa’s false body in his dreams.

Not when there's so much to protect.

Avad is getting married. Itamen is growing up. The civil war is over, Aloy is sleeping in his bed, and the inevitable escalation of the Derangement is a nebulous, intangible threat.

Erend can't afford to screw any of this up. It's not just his king that needs him; he feels like failing his duty to Avad would mean failing his duty to the entire world.

It should be choking. It should be crushing him into the bottom of a bottle, and there are days he _wants_ a drink so badly his hands shake.

He doesn't drink. He chews pungent seeds and seeks out the taste of Aloy sharp and sweet on his tongue.

He spends a lot of time thinking about Ersa. She'd been Avad’s blunt weapon to retake his city, and after that had been done, she'd tasked herself with mopping up any resistance to the new king. He hates that he hadn't paid closer attention; he'd been lazy when he hadn't been drunk, and he'd been drunk all the time. He wonders how she'd handle the things he's handling right now. He wonders what she'd say about the way he's juggling them.

The longer he's sober, the more he realizes he didn't actually know his sister. She'd protected him until she got them out of the Claim, and she'd protected him after that. She'd dragged him out of trouble and berated him when he deserved it. He'd been perfectly content to follow her lead, to be the little brother who drove her crazy. He'd been Charming Oaf, never bothering to think for himself.

He'd been frantic and terrified when she'd been taken. He doesn't really remember those months. He doesn't really remember how many months there were. He'd stayed with their mercenary crew and crawled into the back of his head like he'd done as a kid. He doesn't even remember how she'd come back.

Thinking about it now, that's when he'd _really_ started drinking.

When she'd come back with Avad, Erend had fallen all over himself to do anything she wanted. He hadn't understood the larger political struggle; he'd just gone where she'd said and hit what she said needed to be hit. She’d been hailed as a hero, and he’d loved that. With a flush of shame, Erend thinks that he’d been more proud of being the hero’s little brother than he was of the hero herself.

She’d told the tale of her escape like a wild adventure every time, and leaned back to hold court to the listeners. Erend had swallowed it whole, never thinking for a moment how _hard_ it must have been. He hadn't known she'd loved Avad. He hadn’t known she’d worried about her idiot brother.

He will go to his grave never knowing how much of Ersa’s story is actually true.


	42. Chapter 42

Erend doesn’t even want to guess what tipped them off, but takes approximately half a day for the Vanguard to figure out sex is actually happening, and it's like everyone's birthday came all at once.

His men are _ecstatic_. They've never had so much fun in their _lives_ , and there’s no evidence that shards were even in play. Erend is offered unsolicited advice he doesn't need, and some he actually does need but will die before admitting to it.

He can only punish them so much.

On the whole, the Vanguard has been in Meridian for almost five years, and no one can stay in a place that long and not set down roots. The Carja aren’t _thrilled_ , but there have been a handful of quiet marriages; Alber even has two kids. Among the others, there are always love affairs. Tandin has a longstanding association with a Carja leatherworker, and Kip’s recently shacked up with the Oseram artisan making his metal hand.

There are _so many_ limb-related jokes Erend isn't sure Kip didn't plan on seducing the other man all along.

Still, Erend’s the captain, and that makes it infinitely more interesting to everyone. It also makes it infinitely more awkward.

“Cap,” Kip says seriously, leaning in with a gesture. “You've got-”

Erend rakes his fingers through his moustache. “What?”

“...red short and curly,” the Vanguardsman says with a heroically straight face, before dissolving into giggles and dancing away.

 _Deviants_ , every single one. He's paralyzed and flushed from his ears to his nose, and so very, very fond of them.

 

****

 

He loves her. He loves the smell of her, the taste of her. He loves being tucked inside her, of being surrounded by her in every way possible. He forgets everything, turning himself over to her intoxication.

She's light and life and a heat that never wanes.

She's also going to leave.

It's as certain and painful as the blazing winter sun. Erend’s been carefully blocking it out of his mind, but it’s going to happen.

He’d just never expected the suggestion to come out of his own mouth.

“Elisabet,” he says abruptly, as the thought hits him. “Did she have some kind of…workshop?” He’s still struggling with the function of the Focus, but it seems like it’s an endless book. Maybe there’s a library somewhere.

Aloy shakes her head. “She did, but the equipment was damaged. My Focus is still reconstructing her journals. It’s been a thousand years. I don’t know how these things still _work_.”

Well. He’s glad he’s not alone in that. Frankly, he has no idea how she knows any of this in the first place. Olin had a Focus, but it had been given to him by the Eclipse, and Erend is absolutely sure the delver hadn’t used it for anything other than one-way communication. Olin is steady and he knows how to find a trail, but he’s nowhere as clever as Aloy.

No one is as clever as Aloy. The only person he thinks might come close is at the very top of Erend’s list of people he wants to murder. “Sylens?”

She shakes her head. “I keep trying.” She frowns. “Eclipse was using a disassembled Tallneck to boost their signal. Maybe I can do that…”

He senses another long week without her, and he desperately hopes it’s only a week.

 

****

 

Erend does _not_ expect to be invited along.

He’s caught a few seconds of Avad’s time to discuss the security risk of having political dignitaries as wedding guests, and Aloy materializes just as the conversation ends.

“Tallneck,” she says without preamble. “There’s one up the river from Day’s Height.”

“That’s at least two days’ walk,” Avad says. He doesn’t ask why she needs to go. Erend figures both he and the Sun King have resigned themselves to following her opaque logic without question.

“Probably closer to three,” Erend says. “We got word there’s a big herd of Snapmaws in the area.”

“I could do it in a day,” Aloy says. “On a Charger, it’s not that-“

“You are not going to be in favor of my next request,” Avad says, frowning, “but I ask it anyway: ride with Erend. I need to know how the Sundom fares since the Eclipse fell, and I want someone with trusted eyes to visit the garrisons in Day’s Height and Morning’s Watch. That is if, of course, you are confident Adar and Tandin can manage in your stead, Captain.”

Aloy rears back like she’s been slapped. “ _No-_ ”

Erend’s already on it. “ _Yes.”_

“This is a request,” Avad repeats. “Aloy, you are not beholden to my command, but understand this carries significant weight. I intend to send a Vanguard representative to Morning’s Watch regardless, and this seems to be the most reasonable solution.”

It’s something to think about, and Erend rolls it over and over in his head for hours. The visit to Morning’s Watch isn’t something he would do himself, not these days. He absolutely trusts Adar and Tandin, but there’s so much that requires his own attention. He’d rather send Garvehl in his stead.

Aloy’s presence puts everything in an entirely different light, and Erend can suddenly see the wisdom in Avad’s proposal.

Aloy, of course, _fumes_.

“Look,” he says. “You go to the Tallneck. I’ll check in with Day’s Height and then with Morning’s Watch. Between here and there, it’ll just be a walk.”

“I’m faster _alone_ -”

“ _I’m_ not,” he says, and raises his hands to head off her scowl. “I’d have died ten times coming and going to Sunfall. You said yourself I’m noisy and I’m Stalker food in an hour. The Carja garrison commander is good, but he’s not me, and it’s a good idea to check in. Avad’s right.”

She stares at him for a hard minute, anger boiling off her like metalburn. “Fine. But we’re not walking.”

“What?”

“You know what.”

 

****

 

He _doesn’t_ know what, not really. She’s told him, and he’s _seen_ her on her inexplicable mounts, but it’s not until she’s standing just outside the eastern bridge with two Chargers that it hits him.

_This is actually happening._

He’s never been this close to a Charger that’s not actively trying to kill him, and even though he _trusts_ Aloy, and these two beasts are run through with placid blue strands, he still can’t make himself get close. “Are you _sure_?” he asks, and his voice cracks on the question. It's one thing for Aloy to do it, master of machines and tracker of killers, but Erend is brute force. He's solid muscle. He lives on the ground and will die on his feet.

Aloy rolls her eyes. “Either you get on, or I leave you behind.”

“Fine,” he snaps, and immediately regrets it. He’s nervous and - yeah, he’s scared. There are sharp saws on the thing’s horns and he can hear the blaze gurgling through the pipes in its architecture.

She relents, and points to a spot between the machine’s plating. “Put your foot here. Grab the cable at its neck, and pull yourself up.”

He’s going to die.

The first step the thing takes is _terrifying_. It sways under him with a heavy, unstoppable motion, and his knuckles go white. He can hear the slosh of its fluids, the creak and grind as parts articulate.

“Relax into your waist,” Aloy says. “Don't fight it.”

There is nothing about him that can be relaxed. “Easy for _you_ to say.”

She leans across the distance between them, her voice low and warm. “Watch my hips, then.”

There's a stab of self-consciousness because he's not sure these machines can't _hear_ them, but...Aloy nevers has to ask twice.

 

****

 

He’s just about decided he’s not in imminent danger when she says, “We need to get moving. Flick the cable and hang on.”

He trusts her, so he does, and his mount _leaps_ and he’s just about thrown from where he sits.

Erend is too terrified to even be angry.

The sun’s not quite below the horizon when Aloy pulls them up short. “Snapmaws up ahead,” she says. “We can skirt them, but we’ll have to go up through the pass. It’s a few hours more.”

He’s not sure he can breathe. He hasn’t paid much attention to anything other than the machine he’s clinging to.

She frowns. “Are you okay?”

“This is,” he manages, “..an experience.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You’re not enjoying this.”

 _Enjoy_ isn’t a word he’d use. Better words are _nausea_ , or _panic_.

“...it’s fine,” he says faintly. “Totally fine.”

Aloy hops off her Charger and comes to lean against the shoulder of his own. “Would you rather stop here for the night, or press on to Day’s Height?”

Erend isn’t sure what’s worse: the idea of staying on this thing right now, or having to get back on it tomorrow. He must take too long to answer, because she reaches over to gently unclench his hands from the cable. “We’ll camp here.”

They don’t dare risk a fire, not when the Snapmaws are so close, and they’re still close enough to the jungle that the day’s heat still lingers in the air. Aloy digs in her pack for jerky and a few dried vegetables, but Erend doesn’t have the stomach for it.

“I’m sorry,” Aloy says quietly. “I didn’t realize it would be that hard.”

He’s never going to leave the ground again. “It’s not _natural._ ”

She cocks her head. “We can walk the rest of the way, if you want.”

“You’re in a hurry.”

In the distance, one of the Snapmaws gets irritated and puffs a cloud of ice at something on the riverbank. The two Chargers till the ground nearby, oblivious. “I thought you’d find it fun.”

Erend wants to say he’ll get used to it, but he really, really doesn’t think he will. “I’m glad you like it,” he says honestly. “You look...amazing.”

She does. She rides like she’s part of the machine itself, or it’s part of her. Her hair waves behind her in a bright flag, every muscle of her arms and back streamlined in the wind.

When they’re done eating, she lays him back in the tall grass. “You’re still shaking,” she murmurs against his neck.

“Please don’t _ever_ ask me to fly,” he tries, but then her mouth is on his, and he has a whole new reason to shake.

As she rises above him, the moon glows pale and bright on her skin. She surrounds him firm and sweet, and when she rocks against his hips, he forgets any other movement but hers.

 

****

 

The next day, he consents to the Charger ride. He _doesn’t_ like it, but the faster they get there, the faster they can leave. He’s got too much to oversee in Meridian, and he’s never been fond of the dusty emptiness of the Gatelands.

Day’s Height is barely a post. It’s a handful of bored Carja guards in a thick stone tower. “Shellwalkers,” the watch leader says, shrugging. “That’s the most excitement we’ve had.”

“There was a Longleg with ‘em,” one of the guards interjects. “I hate those things. Takes forever to take one down, and they got those _claws_.”

“Concentrate on the air sac,” Aloy says, “but use your arrows. When that sac explodes, your lungs will too, if you’re too close.

There’s a long moment of wide-eyed silence, and then the watch leader clears his throat. “...thanks?”

These guys inspire a _lot_ of confidence, Erend thinks grimly. In their defense, they’re on the wrong side of the Sundom to get the influx of refugees, and with the Nora borders clamped even more tightly than usual, they probably get more Shellwalkers than traders, but a weak link is a weak link, and Erend’s job is to weld.

There’s a trio of Glinthawks nearby, busily scrapping a dead Watcher, and Aloy wanders off to turn them into scrap of her own. Erend puts on the face he wears for the Meridian garrison commander, the one of firm and flexible steel, and growls a little more than he probably should. Technically, as Carja guards, these guys don’t report to him, but he’s the one Avad’s sent, and he’s going to make sure they’re not out here just scratching their asses.

He thinks it mostly works.

 

****

 

It’s a full day and a half to Morning’s Watch, and that’s as the Stormbird flies. If Erend were going alone - which he would absolutely _never_ do, not with the heavy machine presence in this valley and the preponderance of bandits - he’d stick as close to the cliffs as he dared and hope none of the machines in the sky or the water decide to investigate. Aloy favors a more direct approach, and he really, really hopes he's not as noisy as she's said. 

He hates the Gatelands. He hates this section in particular. It’s open and empty, the land too hostile to support human settlement. The Tallneck rears into sight long before its shuddering footfalls echo in his bones. The only hazard posed by the indifferent machines is being crushed beneath massive feet as it makes its slow, ponderous circuit; the real danger lies in the protective phalanx of metal beasts that guard its path.

She’s told him, but Erend still has a hard time _believing_ it. “You _climbed_ that thing?”

“How else am I going to override it?” she retorts.

“Any other way. Literally any other way.”

She rolls her eyes. “You still don’t have any idea what I do, do you?”

“Some days, I really wish I didn’t.”

This particular Tallneck sloshes its way around a small island in the middle of a wide, shallow river. Erend eyes the Snapmaws sunning themselves at the water’s edge and the Glinthawks arguing among themselves in a copse of scraggly trees.

Erend swallows. “You want any backup?”

“I _don’t-_ ”

“I said _want,_ ” he says. “I didn’t say _need_.”

She glowers, and then relents. “If I go in fast and quiet, they won’t even notice I’m there.”

He nods. “I’ll head up to Morning’s Watch then. Meet at the main gate when you’re done?”

“Maybe I’ll beat you there.” She winks.

Fire and spit, this woman scares the shit out of him, but he is absolutely madly in love. 


	43. Chapter 43

Morning’s Watch is better than Day’s Height. Much better. Erend is very nearly impressed.

The outpost sits at the confluence of several major roads across the Sundom. From the north, there’s traffic from Free Heap and, occasionally, the Banuk lands. Daytower lies at the east, the enormous stone bulwark between the Embrace and the Sundom.

“We’re in pretty good shape because we missed the worst of it,” the garrison commander says. “The Eclipse headed into the Embrace via Dawn’s Sentinel. They didn’t come out, but _Nora_ did. An entire war party! Can you imagine?”

“Yeah,” Erend says bluntly. “I can.”

The commander takes a step back. “Oh. Right. Vanguard. My apologies, then.”

“It’s done. We move on” He clears his throat and looks around. “Our job now is to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Now, show me everything.”

 

****

 

It’s well after nightfall when Aloy flickers into the orange light cast by the gate’s huge braziers. Erend’s sitting there, waiting.

“Bleeding?” he asks, before she can say anything else.

She shakes her head. “I don’t think it worked,” she says. “I created a repeating message, but I don’t know if he’ll hear it.”

“He will or he won’t,” Erend says. “In the meantime, we fortify.”

“It’s not a fight like that,” she retorts.

“You said HEPHAESTUS would escalate, right? That there’ll eventually be something worse? That sounds like a fight to me.”

She hates this. She hates all of this. She’s an overwound tripcaster, cranked so tightly it’s just as likely to break as it is to fire.  

“Hey,” he says gently. “We do what we can. That’s all we’ve got. Ersa said knowledge is the sharpest weapon.”

“Knowledge is what we don’t _have_ ,” she snaps. “Knowledge is the one thing we need, and there’s no way to get it.”

“There’ll _be_ a way,” he says. “We’ll find it.”

She shakes her head, grinding a fist against her eyes. “I don’t know where else to _look_. I’ve been to every Zero Dawn facility-” Her spine goes straight and alert, as if jerked by a string. “Eleuthia.”

“Eleuthia,” Erend repeats.

“Where GAIA made me,” Aloy says. “It’s Eleuthia-9. That means there are at least eight others, and if I find them, _maybe_ -”

He’s going to lose her. He’s going to lose her for _months_. “Is there a map?”

Her eyes go unfocused as she swipes at empty air in front of her nose. “So much of the data is corrupted, but maybe I overlooked....”

She’s gone for the night. He can already tell. She’s the smartest person in the entire world, and it takes _nothing_ for her to disappear inside her head.

If he swallows back the howling anxiety, if he can just look at her and see a pretty girl squinting at things no one else can see...she’s utterly adorable. She’s freckles and wild hair and more tenacity than he’s seen in twelve other people.

There’s an empty room in the inn, and they take it. There’s water, pumped up from the river by the same vent mechanism as Meridian, and Erend gratefully wipes away the dust from the road. He hands the damp cloth to Aloy, and she holds it absently, too engrossed to really even notice.

She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. “I love you so much,” he says quietly.

She stops and looks up at him, her copper-green eyes soft. For one lightheaded second, he thinks she’s going to say it back, but instead, she just regards him, her face inscrutable.

 _Marry me_ , Erend almost blurts out, his heart suddenly caught in his throat. _You’re all I’m ever going to want, and I want you to understand exactly what that means. However big this is - whatever HEPHAESTUS is or does, whatever chaos the other subroutines are going to bring - I won’t let you carry this burden alone. I won’t let you carry_ anything _alone. Tell me you’ll let me come with you, tell me you want me, and I won’t ever leave your side._

There’s a hearth he didn’t know he wanted, and even though he’s not convinced it will exist - or even if it _can_ exist - he suddenly wants to tell her about it. He wants to detail its warmth and light, but despite the fact they’ve been sharing a bed for months, he can see the feral tension in her body.Even broaching the subject feels like thicker chains than _I love you_ ever did.

“I might push on to Daytower,” he says instead. “It’s close enough, and I can’t see coming back here for awhile. You don’t have to come if you’ve got other plans.”

“Most of my data on Eleuthia is corrupted.” Aloy frowns at something on her Focus, the dripping cloth forgotten in her hand. “I’ve already gotten as much as I could from Zero Dawn. When I was at Eleuthia, I was running against HADES. I’m sure there’s something I missed.”

“You’d just fought a Thunderjaw,” he says helpfully, very carefully keeping his eyes from drifting to the scar that curves away from her chin.

“Exactly. I need to go back.”

“That’s the Nora mountain?”

“Mother’s Heart.”

It’ll be at least a week of travel through hard mountains. Sometimes, he thinks that Meridian’s dry winters happen because the other lands wick all the water for themselves, and this will be cold, wet snow the whole way.

Erend has his duty to his king. Avad is getting married on the summer solstice, and that’s almost half a year away. There’s so much to _do-_

Still. There haven’t been any reliable reports out of the Embrace since the Nora closed their gates. If he’s allowed in with Aloy, he can make the assessment he was supposed to do three years ago, before the massacre at the Proving changed everything.

He drinks her in, fierce and bright and very much alive. “I can send a message to Avad,” he says. It’s a month he can’t comfortably spare, but he already knows he’s going to do it anyway. She won’t do this alone, not if he can help it.

She frowns. “I didn’t ask you.”

“I’m doing the asking. Will you let me come with you?”

“They’re my people.”

They are, and that’s exactly the problem. There’s a resigned tone in her voice, a weary acceptance, and his chest aches. “Last time, they almost didn’t let you leave.” It’s been almost two seasons. She’s their Anointed, and he’d bet shards they consume her like ants the moment she returns. “It’s like I said before: you do your thing, and I’ll be big and scary.” He can’t say to her face that they already hate him, and whatever interference he can run, he will run with _great_ relish.

Her shoulders slump. “I’m glad you’re here,” she says quietly.

 _Marry me_. “I told you,” he says. “I’m never going anywhere else.”

“This isn’t your fight.”

“If you’re in it, then yeah. It _definitely_ is.” Her jaw clenches, and he knows _exactly_ what she’s going to say. “My hits, Aloy. Mine. Not yours.”

She narrows her eyes. “Don’t-”

“My choice,” he reminds her.

They both know he’s right, so she just growls and throws the washcloth at him.  

He grins.

 

****

 

Eventually, he coaxes her away from her research and into bed. She smells like dust and hard travel, and it ignites him like nothing else does. “I love you,” he breathes, until she pulls him close and he forgets how to breathe at all.

Later, curled around her in the afterglow, he considers the hearth in his mind. He’s turning it over and over, wanting to examine its edges but afraid to look directly at its possibility, when he almost convulses with a sudden spurt of panic. “We, uh...we keep doing this, we could have a baby.”

Fire and _spit_ , he’s such an idiot-

Incompetent. Inconsiderate. _Stupid-_

There’s a long pause, his heart frozen in his chest, and then she sleepily mumbles, “You afraid it's gonna look like you?”

He’s his father's son. He's the product of a broken clan with its poison thick in his veins, and he _needs_ that poison to die when he does-

He’s going to _puke_ -

She reaches up to tug hard at his hair. “Salvebrush, idiot,” she says. “I thought you noticed.”

His throat is almost too tight to speak. “Salve-?”

“Don’t make me explain this right now.”

He really, really needs her to.

“Tincture. Belt. Pouch on the left,” she says into his shoulder, making a vague gesture to her potions kit. “What did you _think_ was going on?”

He hasn't thought. He just _hasn't,_ and he _should_ have. He's never been so mortified and ashamed in his _life._ “I'm so sorry, I'm sorry-”

“Idiot,” she repeats fondly.

He should have at least _thought_ about this, about the practical consequences, and he _hasn't_. He's just been a mindless, selfish-

She finally moves, impatiently propping her head up on one hand. “Short plant, spiky purple flowers, grows in thin soil. Take a strong tincture once or twice a month against bad water and infection. You’re a useful side effect.” She leans in. “Besides, it _smells_ good.”

The herbal punch in her hair suddenly connects with his brain.

She’s been putting it in her hair for _months_ \- even before she left for the Cauldrons - thinking he'd recognize it and understand, but he's been so dazed he _hasn't._ He hadn't thought anything beyond an animal appreciation of the scent.

He is _such_ an idiot, and if he pukes, it's going to be from a roiling mix of relief and shame.

“You seriously didn't notice.”

“You smell _amazing_ ,” he manages. “All the time.”

She pushes herself up, her hair surrounding him in a glorious curtain. “Are you okay?” she asks quietly.

He’s not, not really, but once his heart stops pounding, he’s going to _get_ there. “...only if you are.”

Her mouth covers his, hot and sweet. Aloy, who never touches anyone, who fights against solitude the way Erend fights against the urge to drink: gorgeous, gorgeous Aloy, rising above him like a pillar of fire, wrapping him up and consuming him with every inch of her perfect, spark-freckled body.

He’ll do anything for her. He’ll follow her anywhere she wants to go, duty be damned. He will pacify a demon subroutine and build a hearth, and he will do all of it with a heart so full it can't be contained in his chest.

 

****

 

If Morning's Watch looked better than Day’s Height, Daytower eclipses them both. If Brightmarket is the trading center of the west, then Daytower is its sister to the east. There's no jewel-toned jungle here, just red stone bleeding from ice that's already thick in shadowed corners.

The last time Erend was through this gate, he’d been leading the delegation to the Embrace, and Ersa had still been alive.

The reception is far more welcoming than Erend expects. The garrison commander isn’t a particularly effusive man - a common trait among Carja military leadership, he’s found - but his handshake is warm. “Erend. This is quite unexpected.”

“Balahn.” It’s been years since they fought together to help Avad reclaim Meridian. “It’s good to see you.”

“And Aloy,” the commander says, drawing himself up short. “Forgive me. I didn’t recognize you.”

“I’m surprised you remember me at all,” Aloy says.

Balahn snorts. “The woman who exposed bitter corruption in my ranks? That isn’t a thing I’m likely to forget.” He steps back. “Come, share a meal.”

Over spiced tea and hard biscuits, they talk. “Learning about Ersa gutted me,” Balahn says. “Forgive me for saying, but I was heartened to hear you took her place.”

Erend sips at his tea, suddenly wishing it was far harder. “Thanks.”

“It’s not often we get Vanguard this far east,” he adds. “No less the captain himself.” He looks to Aloy. “You travel together?”

She eyes him steadily, one eyebrow just barely raised. Erend almost laughs; the question answers itself.

“The Sun King asked me to check in with our eastern outposts,” Erend explains. “Then we’re pushing on to the Embrace.”

Balahn nods easily. “Whatever you need to know, you have only to ask. From what I’ve heard from Meridian, we’re lucky to receive attention at all. I wish we could aid in the rebuilding, but I can’t spare the men.”

After the meal, Aloy goes to barter with the thin little merchant shivering in the plaza. Balahn takes Erend around the entire settlement, detailing its capabilities and weaknesses with frank precision.

“Is there a particular concern?” the commander asks.

“Machines from the Metal World attacked,” Erend says. “Everything is a concern these days.”

“If you go into the Embrace, you should know the Nora have sealed their borders,” Balahn says. “We’ve had traders turned away. Some have even been threatened.”

Erend thinks of the Nora War-Chief Sona. “A war party came to Meridian.”

“They passed through,” Balahn confirms. “We offered what aid we could, but it was rebuffed.”

“Can't imagine that,” Erend drawls, and earns a huff of agreement.

“You have a hard road ahead,” Balahn says, more seriously. “The machine threat gets more and more severe.”

“We know.” He wants to hope for an easy journey, but he knows better.

It's good to see Balahn, but the clouds have retreated into the mountaintops, and it's as best a time to leave as they're going to get. They stock up, and head out on the sloping path into the Embrace.

It's the first time Erend’s left the Sundom since that trip to Pitchcliff. He’d been so raw then, shredded by Ersa’s absence and his own unrelenting ache for a drink. A wild-haired Nora huntress hung on the edges of his camp, committed to aid but unwilling to get any closer. He'd been grieving and besotted, and she'd been running scared.

Now, he's captain of the Sun King’s Vanguard. He has the loyalty of good men and the confidence of a king. He hasn't had a drop of alcohol for seven months.

The Nora huntress is standing beside him, her hair a bright flag in the nascent wind. In Pitchcliff, he couldn’t have _imagined_ the things they would face. If someone had told him that two years later, he’d love her the way he does, he’d have laughed in their face.

Of all the things Erend couldn’t possibly expect, Aloy is the best of them.

She glances at him, annoyed. “Well?”

 _Marry me._ “I love you so much.”

Her lips quirk. “Yeah,” she says.  “Let’s get moving.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorrryyyy the posting schedule's gone a bit off. Real Life keeps interfering and I Do Not Approve. <3


	44. Chapter 44

 

They descend into the valley. There are Scrappers and Sawtooths to avoid in the hills and Snapmaws to avoid along the river.

Snow falls.

It was cold in the Gatelands canyons at night - colder than here, he thinks - but there’s a dampness that precipitates a clinging chill. Toward sunset, Aloy takes a detour off the road, and they hunker down in an abandoned hunting camp. Across the river, a herd of Broadhorns lazily amble through the low-hanging fog.  

Erend’s all set to dive into the furs and never come out, but Aloy’s sitting on the cabin’s crumbling stone steps, watching the machines across the valley. “Hey,” he says quietly, easing himself down beside her. “You okay?”

“I don’t think we should kill them,” she says. “No more than we have to. Driving them off is our best option until I figure out HEPHAESTUS.”

“No killing, no escalation?”

She nods tiredly. “I have no idea if it'll work, but we have to try. If the Thunderjaws only appear along routes where people kill machines often, maybe we can keep other areas a little bit safer.” She eyes him. “That means no killing the guards, either.”

He can see spooking a herd of Chargers, but he _really_ can't imagine trying to outrun an angry Sawtooth. “So…”

“Stealth,” she confirms. “I know that's going to be difficult for you.”

He opens his mouth to protest, but she's _right_ , and there's a fond glimmer in her eyes.

He thinks of that first day in the Gatelands. She'd been as blinding and unexpected as a Watcher’s lightning punch. He'd been painfully sober and utterly heartbroken, but he'd known even then that Aloy had an endless amount to teach him.

“Stealth,” he says. “Okay.”

They sit together in silence for awhile, the wind running through the grass in shimmering gray waves. Snowflakes swirl around them, small and cold. He exhales, watching his breath boil into the night air.

She’ll teach him stealth the way she’s taught him a dozen other things: by brutal, unconscious example. She’s bludgeoned him into being the man he’s become, and he’s so grateful his chest aches. He loves her. He loves her _so much_. “One of these days,” he teases, “I’m going to teach _you_ something.”

“I’m here,” she says quietly, the words more cloud than sound. “That’s something.”

Oh. Yeah.

He gets so lost in her, in the _wonder_ of the present moment, that he forgets how much she’s changed. Aloy never touches anyone, but she’s sitting with her shoulder pressed against his. She skirts the edge of civilization like a nervous Strider, but his apartment is the middle of Meridian and she keeps coming back. She’s as enslaved to solitude as he is to the taste of alcohol; the roaring want will never go away, but when he’d asked if he could come with her, she hadn’t said no.

_Marry me._

He can’t say anything past the lump in his throat, so he just tugs her close and presses his lips into her hair.

 

****

 

The next morning dawns clear and cold. A trio of Watchers arrived sometime overnight to studiously patrol the open field north of the hunting camp.

“Did they track us?” Erend asks, surveying the machines from the cabin’s cover.

Aloy shakes her head. “They were with the Broadhorns last night. The herd moved, so they did too.”

“Are we good to leave?”

“If we’re quiet. They’re far enough away it’ll be fine.”

On their way out, one of the Watchers rears up in alarm, and Aloy pushes Erend into a patch of tall grass. They wait, frozen, until the Watcher shakes itself and swishes back to its path.

“That’s it, little ones,” Aloy murmurs. “Just keep moving.”

He’s abruptly reminded of the dream he’d had when she’d stumbled back to Meridian that first time, concussed and obstinately refusing to tell him where she’d been. “Have you ever, um, used a machine to guard you?” he asks. She can override them, but he doesn’t know how much she _trusts_ them.

She gives him a strange look.

“I mean, like...when you're sleeping.” He can't convey the vividness of the dream. He doesn’t know how to describe the way she’d been perfectly curled in the dense undergrowth, and the pacified Watcher’s anxious warble as dream-Erend approached.

“Any machine can kill a hunter, if she’s careless,” Aloy says quietly.

“But if you’ve pacified them-”

“Just because they’re overridden doesn’t mean I can get complacent.”

Only a dream, then.

She takes a long breath. “I'm starting to think I shouldn’t pacify them; I don't know if HEPHAESTUS can tell, and I _need_ that ability. If it looks like a small glitch in the system, maybe it won’t be noticed, but there has to be a threshold.”

He thinks of all the times a pacified machine has distracted its fellows long enough for Aloy to pass by undetected, and his insides go cold. “Ever overridden a Thunderjaw?”

“Once,” she says. “And it barely lasted long enough for me to get out of range. They're angry and they don't like being controlled.”

He doesn’t look at the scar on her jaw.

“We should go,” she says. “We can’t stay here.”

 

****

 

Around midday, the wind picks back up, sharp and dry. There’s another herd of Broadhorns, and a pack of Scrappers busily deconstructing a dead Watcher. Aloy shimmies her way up a tall pine, and drops back down with a disheartening report. “Shellwalkers to the east, a Sawtooth to the north. There’s no way we can avoid all of them.” She considers. “Are you up for a climb?”

“...maybe?”

“There’s a shortcut.”

The shortcut turns out to be a sheer cliff. Aloy’s an expert climber, but Erend is brute force and solid muscle. His body isn’t _built_ to defy gravity. Still, when she nimbly slots herself among the stones, he has no choice but to heft himself up after.

At the top, it doesn’t get easier. They carefully work their way around rivulets of icy meltwater and cracks in the glacier, the snow crunching up to their knees. “You sure this is _better?_ ” Erend wheezes.

“No machines,” she reminds him.

He almost hopes they get eaten by Glinthawks. His bad leg has been a minimal hindrance so far, but as he was grimly hauling himself up the cliff, he’d twisted wrong, and it immediately made its presence known. Keeping his balance on icy ground hasn’t helped.

It's a long day, but eventually, they limp around a herd of Grazers to a small Nora settlement tucked at the top of a precipice. It's abandoned, the buildings lifeless and dark.  

“Empty,” Aloy mutters. “There should be _someone_ here.”

Erend hurts enough that frankly, this could be a hidden Eclipse stronghold and he'd kiss every single one of them if it meant he could sit down. The pain’s gone from insistent to a sharp, shuddery clench that radiates up his thigh, and he can't decide if the cold is mercifully numbing or just another horrible layer of misery.

He sinks down onto the nearest seat-like surface with a desperate noise he doesn't mean to make, and Aloy whips around in alarm.

“Fine,” he manages. “Just...need a minute.”

She gives him a long, searching look, and wordlessly hands him a vial of ember.

He's wrecked. It's all he can do to crawl into the bedroll and he just lies there, throbbing and caught in the distant lassitude of the ember. Aloy curls up next to him, her head tucked into the hollow of his collarbone.

“How bad?” she asks quietly.

“Tweaked it,” he says. He hurts, but more than that, he’s _annoyed._ He’s still a little stiff on that side, but otherwise, it’s been weeks without more than a vague ache. It’s why he’d agreed to this trip without hesitation. He’d thought he was _fine._ “Probably better in the morning.”

“We can stay here,” Aloy offers.

“That’ll last all of four hours. You’ll get frustrated and wander off, and I’ll die of boredom.”

She huffs in protest, but then admits, “...not _four_ hours.”

“Such generosity. She must really like me.”

“I _mean_ it, Erend.”

“I would rather follow you than stay put anywhere else,” he says. “I'd climb ten mountains.”

She snorts.

“Well, maybe one mountain,” he says. “Clearly that’s all I’ve got in me. Please say there’s not another mountain between here and Eleuthia.”

“We’re almost there.” She’s silent a moment. “...It's good to have you here.”

He knows how hard it is for her to even _admit_ that. “I'm just glad you let me.”

“Really?”

“I want to be here,” he says. “I thought that would be obvious by now.” It isn’t. It might never be, and he knows even before the words leave his mouth.

She snuggles down against him. “...I’m getting used to it.”

 

****

 

The sun rises in a dense cloud of snow. The heavy flakes fall like powder and absorb all sound. “We’re close,” Aloy says. “We’ll try the northern gate first.”

Erend takes a slug of ember, and follows.

He hasn’t been back to the Embrace since the day he met Aloy. He _knows_ there was a fierce fight, but he still isn’t prepared for the destruction. It’s been half a year since the Eclipse invaded, and even though snow-powdered green rises up from the ashes, tall, thick trees are still snapped like twigs, malevolent char climbing up the bark. Corpses of machines slump here and there, frosty vines starting to wind through their architecture.

It gets worse the further they go. Snow drifts across patches of bare earth, machines and trees scorched beyond recognition. His foot hits something solid, and an empty canister of blaze rolls away, half-crushed and blown open.

It gives him chills. He can’t imagine what it’s like for Aloy. He can’t imagine what it was like to see it happening.

Well. He'd seen the aftermath in Meridian. It’s a mercy he doesn’t remember being in the thick of it.

The northern gate rises up solid and closed. The timbers are new, salvaged from toppled spruce and thickly lashed together. It’s high enough to stymie a Thunderjaw, and strong enough to block a Trampler. Sharp wooden stakes point outward, freshly-hewn and vicious.

Whatever else the Nora are, they aren’t stupid. They learn and aggressively respond. Erend would bet shards there are traps set within the construction: bombs or tripwires, anything to set off an alarm in sound or flame.

Aloy puts one hand to her Focus. “There’s no one there,” she says after a moment, and sighs heavily. “I thought so.”

“Can we still get in?”

She shakes her head. “Let’s just go to the main one.”

Aloy is perfectly capable of climbing this gate. It’s tall, but not _that_ tall. He can easily imagine her attaching her grappling hook to her tripcaster, but her body language says she won’t even consider it. He doesn’t know if it’s because _he_ can’t climb it, or if she doesn’t want to risk sneaking past tightly-controlled Nora borders.

She's their Anointed. She should be able to arrive however she damn well pleases, but even now, these blue-painted bungs keep crushing some small, vital part of her.

His leg hurts, but he’s still very, very glad he’s here.

They skirt the slopes, bypassing a herd of Striders. There are Grazers down by the river, and as Erend watches, one of the spindly beasts abruptly rears up and stomps at a boar that wandered too close. He remembers stories from the older mercenaries telling of herds so calm that a hunter could walk right in and pluck a canister of blaze from a machine’s back; he doesn’t know if he actually _believes_ that, but he can see the Derangement’s creeping influence. A boar is big, but it’s no threat to a Grazer. It should have gone unnoticed.

Aloy makes a small, choked noise in the back of her throat as they approach the main gate, and Erend instantly knows why. The other gate was sealed and heavily fortified, but only because this one is still in ruins.

Erend doesn’t need a Focus to see what happened here. He’s a soldier, and he instantly recognizes that an entire army came through and crushed everything in its path. Six months later, the damage is barely repaired. Effort and material have been concentrated on the other gates, and this one bristles only with a handful of braves, most of whom look way too young to be given such an important post.

The other gate has been repaired and fortified because there aren't enough people left to defend it.

“Halt!” One of the guards comes forward, spear raised, and then almost trips. “Anointed!” The boy gulps, eyes flicking from Aloy to Erend. “You bring an outlander?”

“He’s with me,” Aloy says firmly. “Are you going to let us in or not?”

The boy at the gate can’t refuse her; of course he can’t, not when she’s got one hand drifting to her longbow, her entire body cocked in defiance. Erend can’t refuse her at a moment like this - well, he can't refuse her _ever -_ and the boy at the gate doesn’t stand a chance.  

Erend has been nursing a glowing resentment for months, but now that he’s here, he just feels...sad. The braves at the gate hold themselves with the brittle jumpiness of young soldiers just barely tried in battle. If it were Erend’s command, these kids would be accompanied by their more level-headed elders, and he’s fought with the Nora. He doesn’t like her, but he can respect War-Chief Sona’s prowess; if she had any other option, she’d have taken it. The best-case scenario is that one of these kids is a runner, and if one of the spotters posted on the ridge sees an incoming threat, a larger defense will be scrambled.

He feels sick. The Nora aren’t going to let Aloy go this time, not when they’ve been so decimated by the Eclipse. She’s too important, and he can smell the desperation in the air, boiling off the kids at the gate like metalburn. He’s been prepared to be Big and Scary, but suddenly, he’s not sure it’s going to be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas, lovelies!


	45. Chapter 45

Erend had been drunk when he’d been here with Reverent Irid. He hadn’t been staggering around, but he’d been just inebriated enough that he couldn’t bother to hide his annoyance at being sent to babysit a priest in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t any one thing about the Nora that was particularly irritating; it was their entire attitude, the way they regarded every aspect of their ridiculous rituals with stone-faced gravity.

He’s Oseram. The ealdormen are the leaders, but only because they argue the loudest and longest. There’s nothing to be particularly reverent about a life full of hard work and hard celebration. There’s no point in worshipping a supernatural force when one’s own two hands can work a bellows and forge something useful from bare earth. He’d looked at the Nora and found them laughable and absurd.

Erend isn’t laughing now.

His memory of the Nora settlements is blurry, and the land is broken enough that even if he’d been sober, there’s no way he could tell where he is now. “Are we going where you had the...lantern thing?”

Aloy shakes her head. “That was Mother’s Heart. It’s at the northern end of the Embrace. We’re going to Mother’s Watch.”

Charming Oaf would make a comment about all the village names being confoundingly alike, but Erend remembers the surge of anger at the Oseram trader confusing Daytower with Day’s Height. “Was Mother’s Heart hit just has hard by the Eclipse?”

“Everything was,” Aloy mutters.

He thinks of Meridian’s decimation, of the ragged scar up Aloy’s jaw and the twisted forest around him. Meridian is slowly rebuilding; the Embrace _isn’t_. There are charred buildings hidden in snow and brush, and no one’s made any attempt to reclaim them.

The main gate is still brittle ash. The northern gate isn’t even a gate anymore, just a tight, angry barricade. This entire valley is a mortally-deep wound too vast to even clot.

He doesn’t want to be here. He wishes he didn’t know. He wants to have stayed in the Sundom to nurse his resentment, but Aloy is here, and there’s nowhere else he can be. He’s captive to her flame, and that means following her through the bones of her home.

At some point, she reaches over and grabs at his hand, her fingers hard and clenched around his own. It’s a desperate contact, something alive and good as the ash mixes with snow under their boots.

They keep walking.

 

****

 

Erend doesn’t expect their arrival to be quiet, and he isn’t wrong.

“By the Goddess!” gasps a woman going the opposite way on the path, a bundle of firewood falling from her arms. “Anointed!”

“Teersa,” Aloy says. “Is she at Mother’s Cradle?”

The woman nods too many times, dropping to her knees but not to gather her sticks.

The reaction is not unusual. The closer they get to the village, a cry goes up - “Anointed! The Anointed has returned to us!” - and a pitiful crowd gathers to escort them in.

Aloy goes tight and pinched the closer they get. She drops his hand, clinging instead to the grip of her longbow. There’s been some attempt at restoration, but not much. Most of the houses are collapsed and dark, stone chimneys like broken spines. A bulky machine corpse is half-buried in crumbling stone, and with a surge of alarm, he realizes it’s a Corruptor, its long whiplike tail limp where it fell.

It’s been two seasons, and if it weren’t for the slow growth of moss and weeds, he’d think the battle happened yesterday.

The only person to actually greet them by name is Varl, who pushed his way through the crowd. “Aloy!” He blinks. “And _Erend._ ”

Erend knows they talked in Meridian. He remembers part of the conversation, but anything else melted in the fever. There are new scars on Varl’s face, blue paint running over dense, knotted tissue.

“It’s so good see you,” Aloy says, and she almost sounds like she means it. She reaches out to clasp his hand, and there’s a moment of hesitation before he takes it.

“I didn’t think you’d ever come back.” His expression changes, a frisson of alarm in a man too jaded for any more fear. “What’s happened? Why are you here?”

“Nothing’s happened,” Aloy says, a little too quickly. Her eyelids flicker, a brief moment of what almost looks like guilt. “I just...need information, and I have to go inside All-Mother to get it.”

“Of course,” Varl says. “The mountain is yours.” He offers Erend his hand. “I never expected to see _you_ here.”

“That makes two of us.” Varl fought and bled for Aloy, and stepped back even when he didn’t want to, and he deserves whatever courtesy Erend can muster. “It’s good to see you well.”

Varl hesitates. “Do you want to rest from your journey, or are you going straight to the mountain?”

They’re both tired. It’s cold and they haven’t risked a fire. Erend wants to drown himself in ember, and then he wants to lay Aloy back in a mound of furs and do everything he can to chase the blank-faced tension from her body.

“The mountain,” Aloy says firmly.

Of course she does.

 

****

 

Further up the path, there's still been no effort to clean or rebuild. Ragged stumps and toppled structures stand in mute testament to the invasion. Sacred wooden monuments sag on their bases, and amid it all lies the hulking frame of a Thunderjaw. There's still a sharp tinge of metalburn in the air, and Erend suddenly can't breathe.

He can't ask, and he doesn't have to.

He follows Aloy and Varl to a cave. The mouth is heavily fortified, thick timbers sharpened and pointed out at a cruel, uncertain world. This was clearly where the fighting was heaviest: the entire cliff face around the built-up entrance is scorched black and bare.

“Be honored,” Varl says darkly as he leads them inside. “Until the attack, no one was allowed in here, especially not outlanders.”

Erend wants to retort with something suitably stinging, but his mind is mercifully blank.

As his eyes adjust to the dim candlelight, Erend suddenly realizes why so few of the homes have been repaired: most of the tribe are living _here._ There's a heavy press of stale human sweat in the back of his throat, layered with old blood and the mingled smoke of candles and cooking fires.

“Teersa saved them,” Aloy murmurs at his shoulder. “She broke taboo and brought as many people inside as she could. It's the only reason there's anyone left.”

Erend wants to tell her she's another reason, but her jaw is clenched so tightly he’s afraid she’s about to shatter.

As drunk as he was the last time he was here, he doesn’t expect to recognize any of the Matriarchs, but the old woman in the elaborate headdress is the same one who had exhorted her people to listen to Avad’s declaration of peace.

“Aloy!” Teersa comes up with surprising swiftness, her arms out in greeting. “Our Seeker has returned.” She looks her over. “There was such concern after the battle. We haven’t heard in so long...I’m so glad to see you well.”

“I’ve had things to do,” Aloy says awkwardly. The escort of would-be faithful has clustered in a hungry circle, with more Nora coming to join. They’re all staring at Aloy with an intense and fearful joy, and Erend casually shifts on his feet, letting his breath swell his chest and lengthen his spine. He’s two deferential steps behind her shoulder; he wants them to see that he’s not a guard, just a travelling companion, but also that he answers to her alone.

They do _not_ like him. He can feel the confusion and discontent settling in like a storm. He’s an outlander in their sacred space, an Oseram, accompanying their Anointed. They don’t know why he’s here. They don’t know who he is.

If they hadn’t treated her so badly, maybe they wouldn’t feel so threatened by him. He'd come here fully intending to remind them of that, but now that he's standing among them, he just wants to take Aloy and run.

They are _never_ going to let her go. Their desperation is a steel trap, and he and Aloy have walked right in.

“I know you,” the Matriarch says, turning to Erend. “You were here with the Carja delegation.”

Fire and spit, he’d hoped it was long enough ago that no one would remember. He’s not clear on the details, but he’s absolutely sure he’d made an ass of himself somehow.

“The Sun King Avad sends his regards,” Erend says. The words roll out like he’s a seasoned diplomat, and he makes himself add, “The Proving. It was...I’ve seen terrible things, and that was...and then coming through here today- I’m so sorry.”

Teersa reaches for his hands, cupping them in her own. Her skin is soft and freckled with age at the knuckles. “Thank you. I've been told Meridian suffered just as we have.”

 _Meridian is rebuilding,_ he wants to shout. _Meridian isn't anything like here._ “The Sun King offers aid,” he says instead, praying they won't hear the crack in his voice. “No debt. No obligation. Just thanks from a grateful ally.”

Teersa is silent for a long moment. “It will be discussed,” she finally, and Erend’s heart sinks.

“I need inside All-Mother,” Aloy interjects. “We can talk when I'm done.”

She needs time for her Focus to process any data she finds, and she doesn’t want to risk getting dragged into anything else. HEPHAESTUS is the greatest threat, and Erend’s job is to help her stay on target.

“Of course,” Teersa says. “Whatever you need.” She hesitates. “Forgive me, Aloy, your...friend. I don’t believe I’ve caught his name.”

“Erend Vanguardsman,” Aloy says. “Sun King Avad asked him to assess the machine threat in the Gatelands. I asked him to accompany me through the Embrace.”

“It’s most unwise to travel alone,” the Matriarch agrees, and then frowns. “It’s...new to have an outlander in our sacred space, but Aloy, do you intend to take him with you inside the mountain?”

Aloy is their precious Anointed and she’ll bludgeon her way through delicate negotiation, but he’s absolutely sure even the Nora have limits as to what they’ll allow the Anointed to demand. “I’ll stay out here,” he offers.

“I want you with me,” she says flatly. “I need your eyes on this.”

“If it must be done, it must be done,” Teersa says quickly. “I trust your judgement, Aloy.”

Erend touches Aloy’s elbow and tugs her aside. Their audience shifts. “Look,” he mutters. “I feel like they’ll shred us both for this. They don’t even want me _here._ ”

“You came with me to Zero Dawn.”

“Yeah, because it was right under Sunfall, and the Carja wanted to kill us for entirely different reasons.”

She frowns. “If you don’t want to come with me, just say so.”

He wants. Oh, he wants. This is where she was _born_ , and even if it weren’t, it’s another facility from the Ancient Ones, and he’s dying to see inside. He wants to see the flickering lights. He wants to hear impossible voices from before the world ended. “Before you came back to Meridian, right after the Spire…Varl asked. About us. About what I was to you.”

“I don’t care what they think,” she retorts. “You know that.”

He isn’t good with words, and he can’t think of a delicate way to express _we’re going to defile their sacred space and they’re going to think it’s because we’re fucking._

“You’re the captain of the Vanguard,” she says. “If nothing else-“

“It doesn’t matter. Not to them.”

“You’re with me,” she says firmly. “They don’t get to say. If Varl cares so much, he can come, too.”

“That’s…not a bad idea, actually.”

“It’s a terrible idea,” she hisses. “You never believed all this superstitious mumbo-jumbo in the first place. I thought he’d been a _little_ reasonable, but he’s the same as the rest of them.”

She needs them, but she hates them, and he hates them for making her feel this way. If they’d raised her properly – if they’re raised her at _all_ – Aloy could be even more powerful than she already is. She could be a true champion for her tribe. She would stand firm with their paint on her face and their might behind her. She would be their Anointed, tall and fierce, and Meridian would shudder in her presence.

The leadership of the world would be irrevocably changed: it would be Aloy of the Nora, the Sun King Avad and…well, it should be Ersa of the Oseram, as long as he’s mining that vein. Instead, the only one of them truly leading their people is Avad. Aloy is an angry, abandoned child, and Erend is barely an afterthought.

She chafes against her people, and they hate her for being who she is.

He sighs. “Well, at least I’m not Carja, right?”

She snorts. “It would serve them right.”

“Don’t joke,” he says. “Everyone lost someone in the Red Raids.”

“Right,” she says quietly. “Sorry.”

In the end, she squares her shoulders and walks up to the triangle door etched into the wall. “You profane this space,” one of the wild-haired old women growls.

“I was born here,” Aloy snaps. “This door is mine.”

“The outlander-“

“Stood with me to save the world,” Aloy retorts. “Get out of my way, Lansra.”

“Many of our braves stood beside you,” Teersa reminds her.

“I don’t see any of them volunteering.” She looks around. “Anyone? Varl? Any takers?”

Varl scowls. “I would not-“

“That’s what I thought.” She shakes her head and glances at Erend. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”


	46. Chapter 46

He’s never going to get used to the way the lights come out of the door to rake down her body, or the way the air blows through the entrance to ruffle the fire of her hair. She walks inside and Erend follows, the eyes of the tribe heavy on his shoulders.

He’s expecting the same dampness as the place under Sunfall, but this is cold and dry. The air tastes like stone. There’s a thick orange stripe painted on the floor, and he follows her along its path. Blue-white-pink flickering lights hang in impossible clusters. On impulse, he hesitantly puts his hand through one, but it feels like nothing. It glimmers over his skin, empty color with no substance to its glow.

“It would have responded to your touch,” Aloy says, her voice hushed in the ancient space. “It would have known you were there.”

“Like your Focus?” She nods. “How does that even _work?"_

“I don’t know.”

“Would Sylens know?” He doesn’t want to keep asking about the voice in her ear, but he _needs_ to. He needs to know the boundaries of knowledge, the difference between Aloy and her silent partner.

“Probably.” For a moment, she sounds a little bitter, but then she shakes herself free. “We should keep moving.”

He follows.

Bright drawings stretch across the walls, figures of humans and unknown machines under great swirls of color. “This is where the first people were born,” Aloy says quietly. “The facility...failed. They had to leave. It wasn’t supposed to be that way.”

Aloy was born here and she had to leave, too.

As if reading his mind, she takes them around a bend. There’s a clear tube the size of his torso, wrapped in a cradle of wire like colored vine. “This is an incubator,” she says quietly. “It’s an artificial womb.”

This is what held her.

 _Motherless._  She’s told him she was made from a machine, but he couldn’t picture it in his mind. Now, the device is in front of him, heavy and squat, and he _still_ doesn’t understand.  

The machines are metal. The Banuk sometimes weave cables through their own skin, but they’re human. Aloy is flesh and blood. He’s _felt_ her. There’s no way this container can grow a baby - it _can’t_ \- but this isn’t something she would lie about. Not when _motherless_ is her deepest wound.

He wants to ask _how_ , but her face is flat and blank and he can’t make the words form in his mouth. She keeps saying she was made, not born, but all he can see is perfection. Alcohol is distilled in tanks, and maybe she was, too: pure essence concentrated into blinding light.

“I love you,” he offers.

The look she gives him is tired and miserable, and _no,_ that’s not at all what he meant. He reaches out but she shrugs away from his touch. “Let’s go.”

She takes him down a winding staircase, and the room opens into a huge cavern. Perfect blue squares of light line the walls, a strange chair perched in front of each one. “This was supposed to be APOLLO,” she says. “The children would have learned here.”

He wonders what it would have been like, to have humanity raised in a cradle like this, to still possess that incredible body of knowledge. He’s suddenly hit with the enormity of how different the world could be.

Would there be a Derangement?

Would there have even been an Aloy, without the need for her?

He’s not a complicated man. He looks at the woman standing in front of him, the woman he loves more than anything else in the world, and selfishly, a tiny kernel of him is grateful for the chaos.

She takes him up another staircase and into a smaller room. She glances at him. “Are you ready for this?”

No. He’s never ready, not for her, not for _anything_ , but he will follow her every single time.

Aloy places her palm against a pillar, and the room lights up. It’s like the talking ghosts of Zero Dawn, but this is GAIA herself.

Erend doesn’t know what he expected, but he didn’t expect her to look like a person. She speaks with a human voice, not the terrifying metal grind of HADES. She addresses an Elisabet who will become Aloy. He stands transfixed.

 _You are my solution_.

Aloy isn’t a solution. She’s a person.

_No, Elisabet, I know you too well. Somehow, you will find a way. In you, all things are possible._

When it’s over, his throat is too tight to speak.

“I’m going to double-check the database,” Aloy says, her voice harsh in the sudden quiet. “I think I got everything last time, but I need to make sure.”

Erend means to make a noise of agreement, but he’s paralyzed. He can only stare at the place where the guardian of the subroutines hung in empty air.

Aloy moves around from glowing screen to glowing screen. She does things with her Focus. _Somehow, you will find a way_. Aloy takes the questions of the world and smashes her way to an answer. She’s as subtle as a firestorm, leaving a trail of dazed char in her wake.

His legs are shaking, so he eases himself down to the floor. There’s so much he doesn’t know. There’s so much he _can’t_ know. He’s trying to be as clever as Ersa, but he will _never_ be as clever as Aloy, and he gets so caught in her light that sometimes, he just _forgets._

He wants her to be Aloy the person, but that isn’t entirely who she is. She has the face of a dead woman and the ability to open doors from a thousand years ago. She has a voice in her ear and the ability to see things no one else can. She’s lithe and fierce and angry, and the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

She makes a small noise of frustration. “I can’t tell if anything of this is useful. It’s all so corrupted.”

“Corrupted?” He thinks of the Eclipse, of boiling red metalburn and her blood filling his hands.

“Degraded,” she says. “Broken. It’s old. I don’t know how much I can reconstruct.” She shakes her head. “I’ll have to go through all of it to be sure.”

Erend doesn’t know how long it takes. He sits on the floor, watching her work in the flickering glow. His leg hurts, a steady, grounding ache.

Finally, she straightens, putting her hands to the small of her back and stretching.

“You get everything you needed?” He’s not sure how to tell, not when the flickering lights haven’t perceptively changed. Maybe the light isn’t like water, and can’t be spooned out.

She shrugs. “We’ll see.”

 

****

 

This place is deeply unsettling, but he really doesn’t want to leave. It’s so much bigger than the place under Sunfall. It’s...quieter. There isn’t the constant drip of seeping water. There aren't rats. There's just...nothing. Nothing but cold history, and he feels its weight in his chest.

This is where Aloy was born, and that’s something he wants to sit with. He wants to feel the cold seep into his bones. He wants to watch the strange story over and over and over again until the words are stamped into his brain and the image is burned behind his eyelids.

“Can I watch it again?” he asks.

She frowns, but places her hand on the pedestal, and the impossible woman flickers back into view.

_In you, all things are possible._

Erend agrees, but for very, very different reasons.

 

****

 

When they come out, the crowd of Nora has grown. They’re crouched like waiting Stalkers, starving for her words. An eager murmur moves through the crowd like a wave of wind in tall grass: “She’s returned! The Anointed has returned!”

He hates them. He hates them _so much._ They don’t understand, but the bigger sin is that they don’t _want_ to. They’re seeing only the parts of her they can consume, going after her like birds picking choice seeds from a fruit. Even Varl, presented with a chance to learn, refused to even _try._

Erend wants to scream. He wants to shake every single one of them until their willfully-blind eyes pop from their ignorant skulls. They’ll discard and devour her, but they won’t consider even for one _moment_ that they’re wrong.

They aren’t her people, and she isn’t theirs. They only want to possess her, and he breathes hard against the cold rush of fury in his veins.

The doors close behind her, and Aloy stares out at the crowd with a bone-deep weariness. “Don’t do that,” she says, her voice brittle. “Get off your knees.” No one moves, and her hands go to fists. “I said get _up!"_

Slowly, they rise. “Anointed,” one of the braves in the front says hesitantly. “Did the Goddess speak to you? What did she say?”

“She said to stand up,” Aloy snaps.

They look doubtful, and why the fuck is _that_ the one thing they don’t believe?

“I asked for information about the machines,” Aloy finally says. “She gave me some, but I don’t know what it means. I have to study it.”

There are more scattered whispers, and Erend almost explodes.

She doesn’t owe them answers. She doesn’t owe them _anything_. It doesn’t matter that the Nora worship it: the mountain is hers. She should be able to come and go like it’s her own front door. She shouldn’t have to announce it, and she _really_ shouldn’t have an entire tribe of deluded bungs staring at every move she makes.

Aloy fights solitude like Erend fights his drink, and being right here is the equivalent of dropping him unsupervised in a fully-stocked bar.

Mercifully, Teersa intervenes before Erend plows into the crowd. “You’ve come a long way,” the Matriarch says. “Will you rest?”

“Rest?” Aloy mutters, so low only Erend can hear. “No one ever gets to fucking rest.”

 

****

 

The Nora grasp at her because there isn’t a lot of hope. Erend can taste grim determination in the air, the iron resolve of a people who know their numbers are painfully few. As desperately glad as they are to see Aloy, they’ve slogged through darkness long enough that their instinct is to squint, teary-eyed at her brightness.   

No one’s voicing it, but he sees the question in their eyes: _Anointed, why were you gone? Why didn’t you come back sooner?_

It doesn’t feel good to hate them. He can’t say they deserve the hardship they’ve endured - he’s a better man than that - but there’s a small, angry coal in his heart that mutters how much damage could have been averted if they hadn’t cast Aloy out.

Despite the destruction and the heavy machine presence, the Embrace is still full of wildlife, and mercifully, hunger is the one thing the Nora don’t have to face. Aloy and Varl disappear with a hunting party and come back dragging enough meat to feed the entire village. Two builders are repairing one of the damaged bridges, and despite his bad leg, Erend offers his bulk. It’s grudgingly accepted, and he spends a good few hours holding salvaged beams as they’re lashed into place.

The celebration, such as it is, is subdued. It should be a grand homecoming, but the lanterns flicker in the wind. Erend’s presence is entirely unwelcome, and Aloy lurks on the edge of the crowd until she’s snared by Sona.

Spiced herbal liquor is being passed around. Erend’s leg hurts and he’s crawling with unease; he wants the loose-limbed easiness of the drink, but more than that, he wants to watch Aloy. He wants to let everyone else know he’s watching her, and he needs to be alert, so instead he sips a hot, bitter tea.

“My mom says you Oseram heat your forges with the bones of your enemies.”

The kid suddenly at Erend’s elbow looks about twelve, caught in the gaunt adolescence that promises a lanky future, and he’s just on the cusp of not believing anything a grownup says.

Fire and spit, how do they come up with such slag? Charming Oaf might be ash on the wind, but Erend is a native speaker in smartass. “That’s wildly untrue,” he says, affecting a wounded tone. In a conspiratorial whisper, he adds, “We don’t have nearly that many enemies. Anyone’s bones will do.”

The kid’s eyes go wide, and immediately draw into a suspicious squint.

“Hammer to steel,” Erend says, knocking one fist over his heart. “My axe here was forged on the charcoal of my own uncle.”

The kid scowls and darts away. Erend loops his thumbs under his belly plate and smugly rocks back on his heels.

“That wasn’t kind,” Aloy says, coming up to his shoulder.

“You don’t know it’s _not_ true,” he says. She frowns. “You don’t have any idea how we heat our forges.”

If he lets that thought trickle into his head like tainted mine water, he almost _likes_ it. The concept of taking his failed clan and turning them into something useful: that’s very attractive. All the energy torn from his father’s rotten bones, ingots melted in the heat of his father’s blazing anger. Dead and poison limbs could be turned to charcoal, indistinguishable from strong, healthy trees as they burn.

He started as a moth, drawn by the flame and terrified. The longer he orbits its light, the more he understands that the flame is where he actually belongs.

 

****

 

Aloy can’t stay. She’s tugged back to Sona and two of the Mariarchs, and even though Erend desperately wants to follow her, the Nora War-Chief’s expression is very clear he's not welcome. He can’t _stand_ how clenched Aloy is. At the Spire, all he wanted to do was grab her and run, and now, every drop of blood in his body screams to do the same.

He sits on a charred bench at a charred table and drinks his tea, feeling hot and dangerous.

“Can I sit?” It’s Teb, offering an easy smile as he slings his lanky form across from Erend. “It’s good to see you well, my friend. The last time we met, the situation was dire.”

“The situation still looks dire,” Erend admits, glancing around at the ruined village. “I knew there was fighting, but...this is worse than I thought.”

“We wouldn’t have made it without her,” Teb says quietly. “She came at the last moment and rallied us all.”

“She’s good at that.”

Teb considers his drink. “I’m glad to see you here,” he says. “I’d hoped...well, you said you had her back.”

“I still do.”

The stitcher nods soberly. “Good.”

Across the central bonfire, Varl cranes his neck and then immediately comes over, dropping down next to Teb. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, Erend,” he says. “You know full well what it means, being an outlander here.”

“I follow her,” Erend says. “Believe me, this wasn’t my first choice either.”

“She’s alive,” the brave grumbles. “I suppose that’s worth something.”

“If your stalwart presence is the price we pay for having her here, it's worth it to me,” Teb says, and then admits, “I didn’t think she’d come back at all.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Erend says. “What with the warm welcome and all.”

Varl starts up, but Teb pushes him back down. “Don’t pretend it’s not the truth,” says the stitcher.

“She’s the Anointed,” Varl says. “She’s supposed to guide us.”

“Warm welcome,” Erend reminds him.

“It _was_ warm!”

Erend snorts. “It was _creepy,_ is what it was. You people falling to your knees like she’s going to smite you from the sky if you don't.”

“I know she hates it, but…” Varl struggles. “She’s the _Anointed-_ ”

“She’s Aloy. She’s a person. ”

“We're all people,” Varl retorts. “That doesn't mean we don't have a duty to our tribe. Just because _you_ left yours to get drunk in a faithless city doesn't mean the _rest_ of us will.”

Even six months ago, Erend would have broken Varl’s jaw for that. There's still a long moment where he makes himself breathe past the bloom of fury in his veins.

He isn't good with words, but he _can't_ kill Varl right now. The Nora are broken, but that makes them all the more dangerous. Erend wouldn’t even have time to get blood on his hands before they'd execute him six different ways, and Aloy would die trying to defend him.

If he were a better man, he'd acknowledge that his presence upsets everything. Aloy upsets everything. The Nora don't know whether to love her or fear her, and she's directly connected to events that have shattered their most iron-clad doctrines. She asked them to leave the Embrace, and they did. Because of her, most of the tribe is dead, and and a filthy, faithless outlander violated their most sacred space.

Erend understands why they're upset. He just doesn't _care._ Yeah, he's been drunk, but _he's moving past that._ He's _learning._ He's choosing to change, and fire and spit, it's been a painfully hard journey, but he's committed to walking.

He doesn't see change here. He'd been broken after the Spire, too - broken as the Embrace, mortally, desperately, devastatingly broken - but Erend hadn't fallen back into a bottle. He still hasn’t. He isn't his father, even though he so easily _could_ be. He's going to spend the rest of his life choosing to not be his father.

“The only faithless I see are right here.” Erend narrows his eyes. “You say you serve the All-Mother? Even the _Carja_ wouldn't exile a baby.”

There's a long, shivery moment where Varl looks like a loaded tripcaster half a heartbeat from exploding, and Teb is equally primed to shut him down. “We shouldn't have done that,” Varl finally says, the tendons in his neck straining with the effort. “It’s _wrong_ , not when she’s who she is.”

“She’s _always_ been who she is,” Erend snaps. “She’s here because she needs the information stored in your stupid mountain. I’m here to make sure you bungs don’t do anything to stop her.”

“You think we’d _hurt_ her-”

“You already _did."_  And there, he’s said it, and he’s going to keep going. He can feel himself swelling up into Big and Scary, and _fuck,_ he’s wanted to do this for so very, very long. “I’m here to make sure you don’t do it again.”

Varl looks like he’s about to finally start the fight that Erend will _absolutely_ finish, and Teb - Teb almost looks _pleased_.

“I was a kid,” Varl growls. “I didn’t know.”

“She was a kid too,” Erend retorts. “We were all kids, but we don’t stay that way. We make our own choices. My dad beat the shit out of me, but you won’t _ever_ see me slapping anyone around.”

Varl’s gone still and quiet.

“You’ve already made your decision,” Erend continues. “You’ve made that clear, you and the rest of the rusting _faithful_. That’s not something that can be undone. You’ve got another choice to make: you can either do nothing, or you can start helping Aloy _now_. Not the Anointed - _Aloy_. You choose to help her, you’re doing it without any expectation of forgiveness. Got it? She owes you _nothing_. She owes nothing to any of us.”

“We _fought_ -“

“She fought harder. She’s _always_ fought harder. She didn’t have to save us,” he says bluntly. “She could have sat back and burned with the rest of us. She _chose_ not to do that.”

“Of course she didn’t-”

“Of _course_ she didn’t,” Erend repeats. “Of course she didn’t, because she knew she could help. She does that. She sees a problem and doesn’t stop until it’s fixed. She doesn’t wait for someone to tell her she _can._  She gets _pissed_ if you tell her she _can’t._  You know why? Because you fuckers told her she wasn’t good enough, so she’s spent her entire life working to prove she _is._ "

Varl grits his teeth. “She _did_ prove-”

“She shouldn’t have _had_ to!”

Varl finally shoves himself up and away from the table. “What would _you_ know about proving yourself, anyway,” he grumbles.

“I’m a big drunk from a faithless city,” Erend says evenly, and is pleased at Varl’s flinch. “You tell me.”

The brave scowls and stalks away.


	47. Chapter 47

There’s a long moment where Erend just breathes, letting his lungs clean the adrenaline from his blood.

“That went better than I expected,” Teb says quietly.

“Yeah, I didn’t hit him.” Erend makes himself sit back down, and only then realizes his bad leg is cramping and sore. He slugs down the last of his tea. “She’d have killed us both.” He looks at Teb. “What’s your part in all this?”

The stitcher considers. “She saved me. I told you that - do you remember?”

“A bit.”

“Dell wouldn’t even let me thank her. She was a kid - a little _kid_ \- and she’d just done something _unthinkable_ , but he wouldn’t even acknowledge she was _there_.” Teb shakes his head. “I couldn’t be a brave, not after that. It’s easier to say it’s my temperament, but if we’re being honest, by Nora standards, I’m as faithless as you.”

Erend snorts.

“Varl isn’t entirely to blame,” Teb goes on. “No - listen. You’re from Meridian, so our small politics may seem quaint, but our blood runs just as deep and red.” He leans forward. “What I say is between us. Do you understand?”

Erend frowns. “No one’s listening to what I say.”

“You’ve got more influence than you think.”

“Fine. Yes. Not a word.”

“We have three Matriarchs,” Teb says. “Teersa, Jezza and Lansra. You met Lansra at All-Mother?”

“Yeah, she was particularly supportive.”

“She’s our oldest Matriarch. She…” He looks around, and lowers his voice even further. “When I was ten, she fell. When they lifted her up, she...spoke wrong. It was the wrong words. It didn't make any sense. When she got better, they all said it was a miracle. They said the Goddess healed her, but she wasn’t healed, Erend. She wasn’t who she was before.”

Erend listens.

“Who she is, what she says - that’s what she’s become," Teb whispers. "She wasn’t...nice...before, but it’s so much worse now. What happened when Aloy was born isn’t for me to know, but the fact that Aloy was even allowed a Proving...that’s Teersa and Jezza’s influence.”

“They could have tried harder,” Erend says.

“And splintered the tribe?” He shakes his head. “Now, it’s been twenty years of Lansra spewing the poison brewed in her mind. Change is hard, and when it goes against long tradition, well...it’s easier to be angry than it is to admit you’re wrong, you know?”

Erend knows _exactly._

“Aloy confuses everyone. She always has. I don’t know how Aloy can be motherless, but that’s what they say she is, and Lansra’s influence is everywhere. If you’re already afraid of something you don’t understand, of course Lansra makes sense. She doesn’t have to make perfect sense; she just has to make _enough_ sense to plant that seed. If you’ve been told a child is cursed, and then you see her sneak through a pack of Watchers, what are you going to think? Is that a gift from the Goddess, or does she have some kind of machine taint in her blood that lets her commune with them?”

That night in Meridian, Erend had watched her use the jewel on her head to see seek out Olin’s treachery, and it had looked like magic. Every time she consults her Focus, part of him _still_ believes it’s magic. A dead woman wears her face. She can pacify machines, she was _born_ in a machine-

He can see how that would look, but it's  _wrong_. It's all _wrong_ -

His throat closes up. “She _isn’t_ cursed. They should _see_ that by now.”

“Is she?” Teb ticks off his fingers. “She came to run the Proving and when she _won,_  an entire generation died. She was gone for almost two years, and then she appeared in the middle of an impossible massacre. She saved us, but then she asked us to leave to fight beyond our borders. Erend, I’ve seen what she’s capable of, and even _I_ sometimes doubt.”

“It isn’t her _choice_ ,” Erend snaps. “She’s _fixing_ things. She-”

“She saved me. She convinced Sona of her fighting skill. She convinced Varl. She’s done things for others. She’s done _just enough_ that she’s cautiously accepted. Don’t you get it? Even you and I can see how _easy_ it is to see her as a harbinger of death.”

Every time she came back, she was bleeding. Every time he saw her, there was blood on his hands and blood in his dreams- “She isn’t. She _isn’t-_ ”

“I _know_ ,” Teb says. “Erend, I know, but what I’m saying is _it doesn’t matter_. When she declared Aloy Anointed, Teersa knew exactly what she was doing. She was _protecting_ her. Aloy hates it, but it’s kept her alive. If she wasn’t Anointed, we never would have gone to Meridian. Maybe Aloy would have saved the world without us, but do you honestly think she could have come back today? If there were even one of us left, she’d have died at the gate.”

He wants to protest. He wants to _scream_ , but Teb is _right_ , he’s right, and it’s boiling, molten ore in Erend’s chest-

“Varl’s stuck in the middle of this,” Teb says. “His sister Vala died at the Proving. They were barely a year apart, and she meant everything to him. Sona’s always been driven, but she knows what’s best for the tribe, and if that means she has to adapt, she will. She requires the best of herself and the best of everyone around her, and Varl will kill himself trying to measure up. He’s had to be fierce, and he’s had to be strong. He’s a good man, but if you don’t think there’s a part of him that sees the reason his sister is dead every time he looks at Aloy, you’re as blind as Lansra.”

Erend can’t feel his hands, and when he looks down, they’re clenched so hard his knuckles are almost blue. His can’t swallow past the terrified anger clotted in his throat. “She isn’t,” he manages. “She _isn’t_ -”

“And that’s why I’m so glad you’re here,” Teb says quietly. “You’re the most devout of any of us.”

“Don’t you _dare_ -“

“You see her,” Teb interrupts. “You _know_ her. Helping without any expectation of forgiveness: you’re the first one in line, and it’s for better reasons.”

“It doesn’t _matter_ where I am in line. There is no line-“

“That’s my point,” Teb says patiently. “Before – I said she didn’t have anyone, and I meant it. By the Goddess, Erend, she’s never going to have anyone here. Do you understand that now?”

He grinds his teeth. He thought he’d understood before, but he hadn’t. The enormity of it all is starting to sink in, and he really, really wishes it didn’t.

As much as he hates the Nora, he knows a huge part of Aloy still desperately aches to make this her home, and Teb is telling him exactly why she can’t.

“I saw you with the Carja delegation,” Teb says. “I didn’t remember until after the Spire. You aren’t who you were. I see things. I’m a stitcher. I see the edges, and I see you with her.”

Erend's edges are ragged and bleeding.

“You know she needs you. That's why you're here.”

“It's her decision,” Erend snaps. “It's _always-_ ”

“I know,” Teb says quietly. He sighs and rubs his hands through his hair. “Erend, will she keep coming back to talk to the Goddess?”

“It’s _not_ -” Erend makes himself breathe. “I don't know.”

“Can she talk to the Goddess somewhere else?”

“No. I don’t think so. Not for this particular conversation.”

“She needs to leave,” Teb says. “If anything bad happens while she's here - anything, whether it involves her or not - Lansra wins. If anything bad happens after she's gone, Lansra will win. We've lost so much, and Aloy’s been involved in all of it. Even Teersa won't be able to save her.”

This whole time, Erend’s been afraid they'll reject her. He's never considered that they would actually physically hurt her.

He's suddenly terrified she'd let them. She'd think she could just take the blows and wait out their anger, but some of them have been angry her entire _life_. They won't stop, and when she eventually defends herself, that will be the excuse they're looking for.

She isn't a harbinger of death. She _isn't_ , but maybe somehow she is. The tribe is metal bent beyond its capacity; it would take _nothing_ for them to shatter, and if they do, someone is going to die. Aloy is the catalyst, and she could very easily be a victim.

Aloy is light and life and _heat_ , she's the hearth he didn't know he could want, and she's a perfect flame that he never, ever wants to leave. “No,” Erend croaks. “You can't say that. You don't _know_.”

“From your lips to the Goddess’s ears,” Teb says quietly. “I _like_ her, Erend. I'd be so happy to have her stay. Our tribe needs her, but they won't accept her. None of us even _know_ her. All I know is that she sees things no one else can, and she's powerful enough that she's worth killing for. I like her, Erend, but I…” He shakes his head. “Even I don't want to know everything she is. I'm afraid to know.”

Varl couldn't go into the mountain, and neither can Teb.

Erend closes his eyes. “She isn’t cursed. I’ve seen where she’s from. She’s...a gift. She was born to help.”

“I want to believe that,” Teb says. He’s quiet a moment, and then abruptly chuckles. “My friend, please tell me you didn’t come here to ask for a blessing.”

“What?”

“The Matriarchs.” The stitcher grins into the back of his hand. “They wouldn’t let her take you for her mate no matter _who_ she was.”

Erend’s brain is suddenly, wildly blank. He opens and closes his mouth, wordless.

“They’ll see the sun fall out of the sky before they’d allow a Nora to take an outlander.” Teb shakes his head. “You’ll have better luck with your own people.”

“No,” Erend says, a short, awkward sound. “Wouldn’t.”

“That’s a shame.” He sighs, serious again. “I hope she never comes back. Wherever she goes, I hope she never comes back here.”

“Rost is buried here.”

“Lots of things are buried here. She should bury us, too.”

“You’re her tribe.” He has no idea why he’s arguing for this. It isn’t what he thinks, and it isn’t his decision anyway.

“We aren’t. We don’t deserve to be.”

“How is it that you’re the most reasonable out of all these blue-painted bungs?”

Teb chuckles. “A stitcher learns to see edges. Hers and ours will never align.”

Across the fire, Aloy finally extricates herself from the conversation, and stalks across to the bench. She looks from Erend to Teb and back again, and their faces inevitably give them away.

“I know you’re talking about me,” she says. “I don’t like it.”

“It’s my favorite subject,” Erend says, and she scowls.

Teb takes a sip from his tankard. “If it helps, he’s nothing but complimentary.”

She narrows her eyes. “I’m sure he is.”

“I’m _wounded_ ,” Erend says, and adds quietly, “You okay?”

“I’m just…” She glances at Teb. “I’m tired.”

“No one’s going to blame you if you turn in for the night,” says the stitcher. He gets to his feet, taking his tankard with him. “Erend. It’s good to see you, Aloy.”

She hugs herself in a way that has nothing to do with the evening chill. “It’s good to see you too, Teb.”

When he’s gone, she drops down beside Erend, all the strength gone from her bones. Her head sags toward his shoulder. “I saw your face,” she says. “What’s wrong?”

 _Marry me_ , he almost says. _You’re all I’m ever going to want, and I’m never going anywhere else anyway. You aren’t a monster or a goddess. You’re fierce and messy and terrifyingly smart. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me and the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I’m so scared you don’t know what you mean to me, and I’m so scared you’ll bolt if I tell you. Marry me in front of all these idiots just so I can prove them wrong, and then we can run away and never, ever come back._

“I love you,” he says.

Her eyelids flicker. “I’m so tired,” she mumbles. The words are as thick as the brooding clouds overhead. “I’m just so tired.”

****

 

The way the Nora sleep, apparently, is in the cave, all together.

“It’s not safe out here,” Varl says shortly. He doesn’t look at Erend.

“I can take a watch,” Aloy offers. “That way-”

“We’ve got it covered.” He relents a little. “You both look like you’re about to fall over. Let us be the heroes for one night?”

She wants to protest. Erend can see it, but he gently pushes her toward the cave’s mouth and she goes without a fight.

It’s crowded, but not as crowded as it should be. Makeshift shrines are tucked in every nook and niche, small memorials with ruined dolls or broken jewelry on their altars. He can feel the heavy press of eyes on his back as he directs Aloy to a relatively private corner, and drops their bedrolls to the ground.

She settles in with her back to the wall. He puts himself between her and the rest of the cavern, pulling out a pot of oil to work into his gambeson. His bad leg is a dull throb, and when Aloy passes him a vial of ember, it takes all his willpower not to down the entire thing in one swallow.

“You’re not going to sleep?” she asks.

“Thought I’d stay up a bit.”

She chews around the words. “If I...will you wake me up?”

She wants him to wake her up before she starts yelling. There’s no way they both won’t dream tonight - he can already feel the dread creeping into his lungs - and the Nora are already nervous enough having them in their midst. “Shifts,” he says quietly. “You sleep, then I will.”

Something in her body relaxes a little. “Yeah,” she says, and then, much more fiercely, “Don’t you dare let me sleep all night.”

He affects a wide-eyed, innocence. “I would _never_.”

She glares, and it’s so much like her usual self that he just leans over and kisses the tip of her nose. She settles back down with a grumble, and he cards his fingers through the wild blaze of her hair.

He’s between her and the rest of the Nora. He’s tired, but he’s awake. He’s got just enough ember in his system to quell the worst of his leg, but not enough to significantly dull his reflexes. His axe is easily at hand.

Nothing is going to happen to her. Not while he’s still alive.


	48. Chapter 48

The runner comes sometime just before dawn. The sky is gray fading to orange, and the kid is screaming.

“ _Sawtooth!_ Sawtooth at the gate!”

Erend is half a second behind Aloy, scrambling into his gambeson with practiced speed. He’s a soldier, and he knows muscle: his body laces up his armor long before his brain is even awake.

The kid is so breathless he's about to puke. “Sawtooths,” he gasps. “Two of them. Biggest ones I've ever seen-”

Aloy looks at Erend, but he's already there with his axe.

They _run._

 

****

 

It's not big Sawtooths.

It's _Ravagers_.

There isn't even time to comment. Aloy looses four concussive rounds in rapid succession, and then she's vaulting up onto the gate’s ruined ramparts. “Guns!” she shouts to the Nora scrambling behind her. “Watch for the guns!”

Erend isn't a distance fighter. He's got his axe and his heavy armor and a high tolerance for pain. He’s also got a bad leg and a keen awareness that the woman he loves will be _furious_ if he dies.

This is also very clearly one of the bad things that Teb warned him about, and Erend _absolutely_ won’t let Aloy suffer any consequence.

He has to make this count.

The gate guards’ first mistake was to make enough noise that the machines noticed. Erend’s pretty sure if they’d stayed still and quiet, the Ravagers would have continued wandering. It might have only postponed an inevitable conflict, but it would have given the Nora enough time to assemble more of a defensive force. Now, everything is a haphazard reaction in hunters unaccustomed to enemies bigger than the occasional Sawtooth.

Judging by the fear he sees in their movement, even a Sawtooth might be an impossible challenge.

Well. He cracks the joints in his neck, and prepares to get pounded.

Both Ravagers are on full alert and _angry_. Erend charges out of the gate and splashes across the river. From a tactical standpoint, it’s _really_ not an optimal decision, but he can already hear the guns spinning up and the kids at the gate don’t have any idea what’s coming.

It also gives Aloy a chance to get a few good shots in before she has to hit cover.

The first Ravager whirls after him. “That’s right!” Erend shouts. “I’m right here! Come get me!”

About half a second later, they’re _both_ tracking him, and yeah, that wasn’t a good decision either.

Aloy’s concussive rounds all hit their marks. The first Ravager lost plating along its neck and flank, and the second has almost the entire architecture of its head exposed. The machines are tall enough that heads and necks aren’t something Erend can easily hit, so he chooses to concentrate on legs.

Well. _Chooses_ is a generous term. He’s got two pissed-off Ravagers trying to shred him, so he starts hitting _everything_.

He knocks the plating off one leg, and whirls just fast enough to avoid a crushing blow to the chest. Metal teeth gnash hard, sparks bright in the early-morning gloom. The second Ravager pounces with ground-shaking force, and he manages to hook the butt of his axe around a plate under its chin and yank it free.

A paw comes out of nowhere and sends him flying. He hits hard stone and lets his body roll, his lungs gone flaccid and empty. His vision tunnels to black, and then he’s flying in the other direction. Bullets crack the stone right by his head.

Distantly, he hears Aloy bellow his name, and he makes himself move, scrabbling to grab his axe. He swings up and hits plate, splitting a panel on the second Ravager’s throat. Almost immediately, there’s a soft thunk and Aloy’s concussive round explodes in a hail of plate shrapnel and shattering chillwater.

All the hair on his body pimples at once. There are two braves standing ankle-deep in the river, shakily holding their ground as they fire their bows while Erend’s had the machines distracted.

They’re going to fry. “OUT OF THE WATER!” he roars.

They don’t understand, and they’re fucking _kids_ , so they don’t respond with the unquestioning reflexes of a seasoned soldier. He can _feel_ the bubble of electrical charge building.

If he goes for the kids, the Ravagers will crush all three of them. If he keeps the Ravagers’ attention on himself, the kids are going to fry, but maybe not enough to kill them.

The blue energy boils up and then every muscle in his body clenches at once. He hits the ground hard, blood spurting in his mouth, and tries not to panic.

Somewhere above his paroxysm, there’s another concussive round, and then a good-sized fireball from someone’s blast bomb. The shock stops as abruptly as it began, and he’s left coughing and gasping into the mud.

He’s still got his axe. He shoves himself to his feet, his bad leg seized beneath him. His entire body is gone to pins and needles, every muscle uselessly thick. One of the kids is pulling the other from the river, both terrified but mercifully alive.

Aloy shouts something, and he barely dodges in time. A Ravager’s cannon crashes down, the severed cables hissing as they slice through the air.

He doesn’t even think. He lurches toward it, dropping his axe and hefting the cannon up. He sticks his hand inside, fumbling for a trigger, and then he obviously finds it, because the thing smashes back against his chest with a fracturing recoil.

Tears spark in his eyes and he can’t breathe. It's more firepower and kickback than any Oseram cannon he's ever held.

Fire and spit, he might be in love.

Aiming is almost impossible. The thing is too huge and the kick too strong for any finesse, so he just points it at the nearest machine and prays he doesn’t hit anything he shouldn't. The bullets fly sharp and fast. The first Ravager is gearing up for a leap toward the gate, metal jaws gnashing, and Erend apparently hits something vital, because the machine surges up and topples dead into the charred wood. Splinters fly, and half the burnt ramparts come tumbling down on top of it.

The second Ravager is still fighting. It’s spinning on three legs, its lower jaw swinging wildly from a single bundle of wire. He attempts to aim for its head but gets something on its back, a power cell going up with a satisfying pop.

He concentrates on its neck, and its head falls down toward its chest. It sways, fluids gushing from severed tubes.

Erend’s arms are completely numb, and the thing rises up to pounce again, blindly lashing out at him and his stolen cannon.

At that moment, one of Aloy’s hardpoint arrows buries itself in the Ravager’s head. The machine flails, a constellation of sparks erupting from its face, and then crashes into the river, twitching and dead.

It’s over.

He can’t feel his arms. He can’t feel his entire upper body. The cannon slides to the ground and he staggers back, his lungs shuddering without rhythm in his chest. His leg gives out, and he sinks to his knees, trying to decide whether or not to faint. His vision tunnels, and he lovingly considers the ground.

Before he actually hits the mud, Aloy is hauling him up. “Legs,” she commands. “Head. Chest.”

Yes, he has those. He’s very aware of them. He thinks he nods.

It must be the answer she wants, because then she’s grabbing his scarf and yanking his mouth against hers. “The _cannon_ ,” she breathes, and then, fiercely: “Erend, I _love_ you.”

The frigid cascade in his body suddenly has nothing to do with the battle. “ _Now?_ ” falls out of his mouth before he can stop it, and he goes still with inarticulate fear. “You-” He can’t move. Nothing is responding, but he desperately needs to touch her, to check her-

“No, I’m fine.” Her voice suddenly shakes. “I’m fine. Erend, I promise.”

“Bleeding?” he manages.

“A little. You?”

Now that’s he’s looking, now that the buzzing in his head is starting to recede and his body remembers how to inhale, he can see a thin trickle of blood down her cheek from somewhere in her hair. “Bruised,” he groans. “Gonna be _so_ bruised.”

They're lucky. Two kids at the gate are messily dead, another three braves gravely wounded.

“What are these things?” Sona asks warily, skirting the tangled machines with a critical eye. “They aren’t Sawtooths.”

“They're called Ravagers,” Aloy says. “I've never seen one outside the western Gatelands.”

“What are they doing here?”

It’s a question no one can answer.

Aloy goes to poke at the still-twitching corpses, and Erend trails after, retrieving his axe and leaning on it as he limps. He’s immediately hit with a familiar scent. “Metalburn.”

She nods, and gestures to a point beneath a missing plate. “You can see the burn marks here. These were Corrupted.”

“I didn’t know things could get un-Corrupted.”

“Maybe overriding HADES purified them.” She frowns. “Their Cauldron isn’t far from the Embrace, but they tend to head north. They’re too big for close-quarters combat. They’re better with space for the guns.” She goes still. “I think these were left over from the invasion.”

Clean, but not dead.  “Left over, or wandered in?”

“This is a guard. They don’t wander beyond their patrol routes unless something catches their attention.”

Sona comes up behind them. “If these are remnants from the invasion, how many others are there? We don’t have enough braves to check the entire Embrace,” she says tightly. “We’ve barely secured our own borders.”

“The southern gate?” Aloy asks.

“Sealed. We’ve managed that, at least.”

“What else needs to be done?”

“The main gate.”

Erend _hates_ the Nora. He hates the way they’re standing stiff and angry. He hates that they cling so tightly to their stupid religion that they’re unable to see past their own noses. They called Meridian faithless and refused Avad’s aid. They look at Aloy and pretend like calling Anointed immediately erases the years of isolation. They shoved an infant from the warmth and safety of a hearth into the cold, unforgiving wild, and now they’re looking to the woman she’s become to demand she save them.

He thinks about what Teb said: _if anything bad happens while she’s here, Lansra wins._

This definitely counts as something bad, and Aloy has just explicitly connected the two Ravagers on the ground to the massacre. She’s all but handed herself to Lansra on a platter.

For one light-headed second, Erend is sure he’s going to puke.

“The gate,” he makes himself say. He’s brute force and solid muscle, and he will do absolutely whatever it takes to make sure Aloy can walk away from all this. “I’m not a builder, but I can lift.”

Sona narrows her eyes. “Why?”

He makes himself take a long, slow breath. “I’m here. You need help. I’m offering.”

_I will be her ransom. Take me. Use me, you blue assholes._

“We will not be in your debt-”

“Do it,” Varl breaks in. Sona rears back like she’s been slapped, but her son forges ahead. “We need every hand we can get.”

“This is not your place,” Sona hisses.

“You’d let us _die_ for your pride,” Varl retorts. “He fought with us at the Spire. He fought for us on our land _just now_.”

“He’s an outlander-”

“He came with Aloy, a Seeker and our Anointed.” Varl squares his shoulders. “If you won’t accept him on my word, you _have_ to accept him on hers.”

Sona frowns, and then nods once, sharply. “It’s done.” She looks at her son. “Bring as many people as we can round up. We’ve put this task off for far too long.”

 

****

 

Erend _hurts_. He can feel his entire body starting to spasm, but there are logs to lift and timbers to hold. He knows muscle, and he knows how to retreat into the back of his mind when his body starts to complain.

Aloy passes him a vial of ember. “That’s got to be one of our last,” he says.

She shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll trade for more.”

She’s up on the ramparts, helping guide the timbers into place and lashing them firmly. He braces himself, his bad leg shaking, and enjoys the hard lines of her arms and shoulders as she works.

He’s known strong women, but she’s so much more than that. The power she carries in her body is unmistakable. He’s drawn to strong things - work, drink, women - and she is utterly intoxicating.

She feels him watching, and glances down and winks.

If he pretends they're anywhere else, if he closes his eyes and holds only the image of her, the warmth in his chest would feel like a perfect, steady flame, but they're  _not_ anywhere else. They're in the Embrace, and Teb's words pounds in his ears. 

He hurts and he knows muscle. This is a terrible idea, straining so hard after getting knocked around by steel monsters; he's already starting to pay for it, it absolutely has to be done. It's going to be a hard push from now until they walk out of this newly-built gate, and Erend is solid muscle and brute strength. He knows how to take a hit. Until they can leave, he's going to curl himself around her like he did at the Spire and pray the rockets don't shred them both. 


	49. Chapter 49

The gate isn’t done in a day. Erend doesn’t think it’ll be done in a week of days, but at the very least, by the time the sun sets, they’ve got the ruined timbers stripped away and a handful of the new ones prepped and lifted. There’s no shortage of felled trees, and in most of them, the char is only bark-deep.

He knows how to take a hit and he knows how to keep moving. He hasn’t let himself feel anything, but by the time he drops to the ground for the evening meal, he’s absolutely sure he won’t be able to get back up. Aloy disappears and comes back with a vial of ember, seething. “Just got skinned by that trader,” she grumbles. “He barely looked me in the eye.”

 _If anything bad happens, Lansra wins_.

Erend hurts. There's a headache creeping into the top of his spine, and his entire body is clenched into one giant bruise. He’d had to fight the Ravagers, but he suddenly feels like the Ravagers were only the first wave. He’s very, very afraid that the second wave is going to be Nora, and he has no idea what it’s going to look like.

Maybe he’ll be lucky. Maybe Teb is overreacting, and the Nora are so starstruck by Aloy that they can’t do anything worse than trip over themselves in adoration.

He knocks back the ember and tries to massage the cramp out of his bad leg.

 

****

 

Later, they're in the cave and settling in for the night when he hears Aloy take Varl aside. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “I know it wasn’t easy to go against your mother like that.”

“It had to happen.” Varl takes a breath. “Those...Ravagers. Those were intense.”

She shakes her head. “They shouldn’t have been here.”

“You think there are others?”

She wants to say no. She wants to give him a solid, safe answer. “I don’t know.”

“What else could be out there?”

“If I knew, I’d be _worth_ being Anointed,” she snaps.

“So you really didn’t know about the Ravagers?”

Aloy frowns, but Erend’s stomach drops into his feet. “Of course not. If I had, do you really think I’d have let them get so close?”

He wants to jump in and clamp his hand over her mouth. He’s being paranoid, he _is_ -

Varl sighs. “Look, I can’t pretend we don’t need you. We’re so few, Aloy. At the gate today...maybe we’d have made it on our own, but it would have wiped us out.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true.” He shakes his head. “I just...you’re going to leave. You came for information, not for us. I hate that, but...I know why you’re doing it.”

“Varl-”

“You’re not going to stay,” he says. “Not when you have to do whatever it is that you’re doing. We need you, but when you needed us, we weren’t there.”

“You came to the Spire-”

“That doesn’t count.”

“It _does_ ,” she says fiercely. “You only came because I asked, and people _died-_ ”

“We came because you’re the Anointed. We both know if you hadn’t come out of the mountain, no one would have moved an inch. I- even _I_ wouldn’t have gone.”

“That’s not true-”

“Aloy, don’t.”

Erend can hear the hard clench against tears in her silence, and that’s his breaking point. He hauls himself to his feet and limps over.

“You didn’t ask to be who you are,” Varl says. “I want- I want to worship you, and I _know_ you hate that. Everyone says you’re no longer outcast like it’s something we can just wave away, but it _isn’t_.”

Aloy shoots Erend a look.

“Don’t be mad at him,” Varl says. “I wouldn’t have heard it from anyone other than Teb.”

Her eyes flick from Varl to Erend and back again. “I said I didn’t like you talking about me behind my back,” she snaps, and then shoves a hand into Erend’s chest. “ _You_ don’t want me to stay here.”

He doesn’t. He _doesn’t_. He hates that they’re even having this conversation. There’s still a glowing coal in his chest that wants to burn the entire Embrace to the ground, and even then it _still_ won’t be full retribution for their sins against her.

It’s not his judgement to make. It’s not his justice to dispense. He aches for her.

Erend’s angry at his father, and he’s angry at the entire fucking Claim for sitting back and letting his father be the way he was. He’s angry for Aloy because she won’t allow herself feel that anger for herself.

“I don’t make your choices for you,” he says. Loving her means letting her go if that’s what she wants, and it will _kill_ him to leave her here, but if she asks him to, he will.

“You already have! You’re having these cozy little conversations-”

“It was _not_ cozy,” Varl breaks in.

“I said I don’t like it.” Each syllable is a single, vicious bite.

“You don’t like anything,” Varl mutters.

“I don’t have a lot of options!” Aloy throws up her hands. “I didn’t _want_ to come here, but I needed to, so here I am. I don’t _want_ to be your stupid Anointed, but that’s another decision I didn’t get to make. I didn’t _want_ to face HADES, but it was the purpose of my _existence_ , so I did it anyway. I thought that was the end of it, that maybe I could finally _relax_ , take a break, figure out how to _live my life_ , but - _big surprise_ \- I’m chasing down yet another apocalypse, and now here _you_ both are. This isn’t my choice, this is what I was _made_ to do. You need me, the Nora need me, the entire fucking _world_ needs me.” She narrows her eyes. “Yeah, _I don’t like it_.”

“The Matriarchs have never declared an Anointed,” Varl retorts. “Don’t you get it? To go from outcast to such a revered-”

“I didn’t want to be outcast either!” she snaps. “From the moment I got dumped outside of that stupid mountain, nothing has ever been mine, but _no_ , you two get to sit in the shadows and decide what’s best for me.”

This isn’t anger. This is exhaustion. This is too much of everything all at once. There's a hard edge of hysteria in her voice. “It wasn’t like that,” Erend says quietly. “Let’s just-”

“It’s like that _now._ ” Varl's eyes flash. “I’m sorry you don’t _like_ any of this. I’m sorry _your tribe_ is such a burden. You know what _I_ don’t like? I don’t _like_ that my sister died. I don’t _like_ that our home was attacked. I don’t _like_ that you asked us to leave our land, and I don’t _like_ that you keep walking away. You could lead us, Aloy. Maybe you don’t see it, but I do. The Matriarchs do. My mother does. We’d be behind you in whatever you asked, and you could make us whole-”

“I CAN'T!” she shouts. “Not everything can be _fixed_ , and I'm tired of everyone expecting me to do it anyway!”

Her words reverberate off the stone walls, and the only sound is the faint pop of burning candles.

The entire tribe is staring.

Erend doesn't think. He just grabs her arm and hauls her outside, Varl trailing furiously after. His heart pounds in his throat, every muscle in his body screaming to run from the fight he’s absolutely sure is about to crash down on top of him.

“By the Goddess, Aloy,” Varl starts in. “You-”

“I'm trying to override a chaotic subroutine, and you want me to stand up there and tell everyone it's all going to be okay? It's not okay. Nothing is okay.”

Varl opens his mouth, and then shuts it with an audible click. “You're- what?”

“Another metal devil,” Aloy snaps, “so _I_ need-”

She needs to stop talking. She needs to _stop._  Erend suddenly can't read Varl’s face, and every single drop of his blood shrills in panic. This feels like the frozen moment before his father raised his hand, awful and unavoidable, and Erend needs to _leave_. They both need to leave right now, right the fuck _now,_ but when he reaches for Aloy, she slaps his hand away, annoyed, and there: he's _gone_.

He can't breathe. He can't _see._ His entire body is clenched and paralyzed, and he can't fight back because if he fights back, it will be _so much worse_ -

He can take a hit and if he can just curl up, if he can just wait it out-

This isn’t real. This isn’t his father. This is the Embrace, not the Claim. This is Erend standing outside All-Mother, the door to Eleuthia. This is Erend the adult, Erend the captain of the Sun King’s Vanguard. He’s not a terrified child. He doesn’t have to be. He’s stronger than this. He has more agency-

Hands drop onto his shoulders, and he jerks away, the panic spiralling back into a wild scream. They have to go, they have to _go_ -

“Erend,” Aloy says urgently. “ _Erend_.”

He makes himself take a slow, wheezing breath. He makes himself muscle through the black tunnel in his eyes. He makes himself look at her.

Aloy has her hands out, palms up and open. She’s light and life and heat, and he concentrates on the way her hair twists in her braids. The torchlight dances through the strands, burning in the darkness like molten wire. There’s a scratch on her forehead, blood still crusted at its edges.

Varl eyes him warily. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing,” Aloy snaps. “It’s nothing. Just- go away. Leave us alone.”

“I can find a healer-”

“Varl, I said _go away_.”

Erend can’t feel his legs, and he lets her steer him away from the cave’s mouth and further out into the cold. The night air hits him in the face, sharp and bright, and he breathes into it, letting the floating snow fill his lungs and clear his head. She gives him a gentle push toward a rock, and he obediently sits down.

She crouches between his knees, surveying his face. “You okay?” she asks quietly.

He’s embarrassed, is what he is. “...sorry.”

“What happened?”

He can’t say _Teb thinks they’re going to eat you._  He can’t tell her that the Ravagers were the bad thing he’s afraid of, and that Varl is voicing only the mildest concerns of the tribe. The words get caught in his throat, and he has to lean against her shoulder and remember how to breathe.

Her fingers slide into the stripe of hair at his crown and squeeze hard. “If it was that big a deal, you could have just told us to shut up,” she says.

He means to chuckle, but it doesn’t quite happen.  

She pushes him back and peers at his eyes. “How hard did you get hit today?”

“...the usual.”

“I’m serious, Erend.”

He isn’t concussed. Well, maybe he is, but he knows exactly what’s triggered him, and he’s afraid to tell her. She’s kneeling on the frosty ground, scared and tired and still angry at Varl. Varl wouldn’t piss her off if part of her didn’t still want to be here, and Erend can’t make himself say that she really needs to leave.

Erend wants to have had a real dad. He wants to have had a father who didn’t carry his own self-loathing in his fists. Aloy wants a tribe. She wants to belong, but even if the Nora opened their arms to her - not to an Anointed, not to a Seeker, to Aloy the _person_ \- he _knows_ it won’t be the same.

It might be everything she wants it to be. He _wants_ that for her. If he believed she’d be happy here, if he wasn’t absolutely sure she’d be slowly crushed like layers of stone, he’d embrace the Nora with nothing but joy in his heart. She’d be reunited with her people, and the lost boy clenched in his chest could see that healing was even possible. She’d be a leader and a guide, someone strong and confident and whole.

If Erend truly believed she’d be happy here, he’d ask if she’d let him stay. He’d do everything he could to build her a hearth, and he’d spend the rest of his life lost in contented gratitude, a moth surrendered to warm and perfect light.

It’s not like that. It won’t _ever_ be. The part of him that understands is the same part that got broken by his father over and over and over again. Even now, he wants to believe it wasn’t as bad as he remembers, but he knows it _was._ His father never changed. The Nora are as mired in their religion as they ever were, only now it’s compounded by their desperation.

One of these days, Aloy is going to realize that, and he _knows_ it’s going to hit her like a Trampler to the chest. He terrified that they’re teetering on the edge of that realization, and he's clawing at everything, trying to protect her from something neither of them can avoid.

“What did Varl and Teb say to you last night?” she asks. “Something else is going on. Are you going to tell me what?”

“We argued,” he says. “That’s all. Boys being boys. You know.”

She scowls. “Erend.”

Say it. Say it. _Say_ it. “...Teb thinks you’re in danger.” The words almost disappear into the air, a cloud of frosty nothing.

Aloy is unimpressed. “ _That’s_ what set you off? We’re all in danger. That’s why you and I are here.” She shakes her head. “It’s going to be fine, Erend. I got what I could from Eleuthia. There’s one place I want to go tomorrow, and then we can leave. In the meantime…” She gently tilts his head from side to side, biting her lip. Her fingers are cold on his chin. “You should sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

 _No_. That’s not what he wants. If he _has_ to go back inside - back inside where they stare, back inside where their hungry eyes devour her with no thought to her own needs and desires - he wants to be the one to keep watch. She’s unguarded. She doesn’t _know_ -

“Hey,” she says, startled, and he distantly realizes he’s not breathing again. The world blurs, hot and wet. “Wow, okay. It’s _okay_.”

Shit.

“You’re really out of it,” she says, her face twisting with worry. She smooths a hand over his forehead. “Look at me. Headache? Nausea?”

He’s crying. He’s actually _crying_.

“Erend, I’m starting to get scared,” Aloy says, her voice low and calm. “I need you to talk to me.”

He makes himself inhale. She smells like salvebrush and sweat, raw and familiar. “...I’m good. I’m okay.”

“Answer my question, idiot.”

“Headache,” he says, because it’s true. “Not bad. Just...tired.”

She frowns. “How many of me are there?”

“More than enough.” At her alarmed look, he quickly amends, “One. Only one. All I need.”

She rolls her eyes. “Now I _know_ you’re concussed.”

Despite himself, Erend almost laughs. “Pretty girl asks me a question…”

She snorts, but she’s not mad. She moves to sit beside him on the rock, pressing her shoulder against his. “You’re really upset about what Teb said?”

“You want to stay here. I just...I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“They’re not going to hurt me,” she says. “And what I _want_ is to figure out HEPHAESTUS.”

He watches his breath melt the tiny snowflakes drifting through the air. The silence stretches between them, still and cold.

“Everyone’s acting like I have a decision to make,” Aloy finally says. “All I wanted to do was come back and get the data from Eleuthia. I don’t want to get dragged into this Anointed nonsense. I wish it would just go away.”

They both know it won’t. “You could profane something,” he suggests. “Burn down an idol. Pee on the facility’s door.”

“Will you take this seriously?” she snaps. “For _once_ in your life?”

“I am taking this seriously. Why do you think I’m here?”

“I don’t know. Why _are_ you here?”

“You,” he says.

Aloy presses her fingers into her eyes. “Why does everything in this whole stupid world have to be about _me?_ ”

It isn’t fair. She’s one person, and the fate of the entire world balances on the fact of her existence. Everyone is trying to claim pieces of her. He’s as guilty as the Nora, and he _hates_ himself for that.

He wants to make a flippant remark. He wants to say something that makes her scowl and elbow his ribs. The painful tension in her body claws him raw, an agony he can’t escape, and he’s flailing wildly trying to break the pressure. “I don’t have any answers,” he says quietly. “Hammer to steel, Aloy, I wish I did.”

Something breaks inside her a little, and she sags against his shoulder. “I hate it when you say things like that.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“It’s _harder_ with you here,” she mumbles. “You...mess things up. You make everything seem so awful.”

“It’s not great,” he points out.

“Not like that,” she snaps. “You just...I didn’t _want_ to come back, but I had to. I knew it was going to be stupid, but you’re here, and I just- I want it to be just us. I don’t want to deal with anyone else, but I _have_ to.”

“Then we leave tomorrow,” he says.

“They need me-”

“They _want_ you,” he says. “You don’t owe them anything.”

“They _died_ for me. I owe them-”

“You don’t owe them anything,” he repeats. “They live in this world, so they _should_ have helped defend it. Now that’s done, and like you said, we’re working on the second apocalypse, so they can fuck off.”

She’s quiet a moment. “You believe Teb.”

Erend can’t say no.

“What did he say?”

“They’re afraid of you,” he makes himself say.

She snorts. “That’s nothing new.”

“Yeah, but they’re desperate now.”

“They were desperate before. They’re always desperate. They were desperate to get rid of me and desperate to have me back.” She shakes her head. “They _left_ the Embrace because I told them to. Do you understand how big that is? There’s no way they’re going to hurt me. They won’t dare.”

“Lansra-”

“This is about _Lansra?_ ” Aloy actually laughs. “Erend, she’s crazy. She’s _been_ crazy. Do you know how you get to be a Matriarch? You have great-grandchildren. That’s all. There isn’t a test. There’s no election. You just - don’t die. Lansra’s crazy. Nobody listens to her.”

The panic wells up again, sharp and thick. “Don’t _say_ that.”

“She didn’t want me to go into Eleuthia. She didn’t even want me _here_. I think she’d have killed me at birth if she could. Besides, what’s she going to do? Glare at me to death?”

“Aloy-”

“It’s fine,” she says. “It _is_. Maybe Teb’s afraid of her, but I’m not.”

It’s not just Lansra. It’s everything, but Erend can’t make himself tell her exactly what Teb said.

“It’s fine,” Aloy repeats. “Erend, I promise.”

 _Harbinger of death_.

Aloy is light and life and heat. He will do _anything_ to protect her from knowing about that, but he’s not sure she’s going to let him.


	50. Chapter 50

Finally, he’s breathing enough that they head back inside. He swallows hard and squares his shoulders; he _can’t_ buckle under the weight of all those eyes.

“I’ll be right back,” Aloy says as he eases himself down onto the bedroll. “Stay here.”

Erend isn’t going anywhere. He feels wrung out, a water skin sucked empty and dry. Everything hurts. There’s a hard pressure between his eyes, and his bad leg is making him severely regret having a leg at all. When he closes his eyes, the ground starts to wobble uncomfortably.

“Everything okay?” he hears Teb ask.

“He took a bad hit,” Aloy says quietly. “I think it’s fine, but I’m almost out of ember, and Tabi-”

“I’ll get you some,” he quickly agrees. “Don’t worry about it.”

She digs in a pouch on her belt. “I’ve got shards-”

“No. You fought those things off. It’s the least I can do.”

Teb is afraid of Lansra’s influence. Aloy isn’t afraid at all. Erend doesn’t know what to believe, but he _knows_ the sharp intake of breath that precedes the hit. Even if he’s imagining it - even if it isn’t real - he can still _feel_ the fist hanging in this dark cavern. It’s lifted and ready to strike, and Erend isn’t ready.

This is the first time he’s really felt helpless. He’s always been able to push through, but ever since the Spire, he can feel himself slowing down. He can run and swing his axe, and he can take the hits he needs to take, but it feels like they cost more. It’s harder to get up, and it takes longer to heal. This isn’t the first time he’s gotten tossed around. This isn’t even the first time he’s fought a Ravager. He’s sure he’s gotten concussions dozens of times, but this feels so much worse.

It’s not just him now. He isn’t the simple meathead he used to be, happy to get hurt if it meant he could spend a few days drinking it off. His immediate priority is Aloy, helping her accomplish whatever she needs to do and getting her out safely. He has duties in Meridian, and he really should have been back there a week ago. He has Avad and his family to watch over - he has Itamen to protect - and above it all is the nebulous threat of HEPHAESTUS.

There’s too much to do, and if he can - if it’s _possible_ \- there’s a hearth he really, really, wants to build.

“Take this,” Aloy says, dropping down beside him, a vial of ember in her hand.

“I thought that was our last?”

“Teb’s getting us restocked. Tabi’s always had a chip on his shoulder. I’d prefer to work with Emal, but apparently, she’s up in Mother’s Crown having a baby.”

Things he doesn’t _dare_ let himself even consider flash through his head, vivid and perfect, and he almost starts crying all over again.

Aloy pokes him, concern layered with fond amusement. “Just drink it, idiot.”

“I love you,” he croaks. “I love you _so much_.”

She watches him swallow the potion, and then tucks herself into the hollow of his shoulder. “You say it so easily,” she finally says, more to his scarf than to him. “I just. Rost never said he loved me. I think he did, but...I just- I don’t know what it really means.”

“You don’t have to say it.”

“I want to.”

“It means whatever it means to you.”

“What does it mean when _you_ say it?”

He’s brute strength. “It means you kicked me in the head, and I liked it.”

She elbows him. “I’m _serious_.”

He wants to tell her about the hearth. He wants to say _marry me_. He wants to tell her about the future he’s afraid to look at and he wants to tell her she’s the center of everything good that he’s ever known, but if he does - if he even _thinks_ about it - he’s going to turn into a blubbering mess. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Can you at least _try?_ ” There’s a tinge of annoyance to her voice, and below that, a grasping desperation.

“That day we went looking for Ersa,” he finally says. “We were attacked on the ridge.”

“Yeah,” she says doubtfully.

“We fought together. You- I set you up for a kill, and you took it. A Sawtooth. I knocked off the belly plate, and you shot its heart.”

“We’ve done that a dozen times.”

“That was the _first_ , though. I- I can’t even explain. I was so _lost_. I had nothing. I felt like no one. I was drowning in everything, and then _you_ were there, and I set the kill and you took it down, and that moment-” he coughs past the sudden lump in his throat. “It felt like the first clean breath I’d ever taken.”

She doesn’t say anything, the only sound the brief uptick of her breathing.

“That girl in Brightmarket. Do you remember?”

“Elida,” Aloy murmurs. “Yeah.”

“You said she told you she didn’t know she was dead until she met him. I didn’t know I was dead, either, and you...you’re light,” he tries, and then he can’t even pretend he’s not crying. His head hurts and he hates the Nora, but Aloy is here, tucked against him, her hair in his mouth and her scent in his nose. His voice goes thick, his eyes burning fiercely. “You’re heat and life and things I didn’t know I wanted. Being with you is...it’s like coming home to a place I thought I couldn’t have.”

She’s silent a long time, and when she does answer, her voice is small and muffled against his shirt. “...that’s what I mean, too.”

He’s so- he’s crying into his own ears, actually. He’s lying on his back, the tears collecting in the shell of his ears, and it’s _awful_ that he just starts laughing. “I didn’t know,” he makes himself say. “I didn’t know it was _possible_ , and - we’re _here_.”

She makes a small noise of agreement against his scarf, and then adds, “...idiot.”

“I love you, too,” he says, and he can _feel_ her grin.

 

****

 

The next morning, Erend wakes up with a pounding head and a mouth that feels like he’s just eaten half the Gatelands. If he’s ever been more hungover, it’s mercifully erased from his memory.

Aloy’s already packing her bag. “Ember,” she instructs.

He really, really just wants to puke instead.

“Not until we’re outside. Drink it.”

“One of these days,” he mumbles into the bedroll, “I am gonna not listen to you.”

“We’ll see,” she says smugly.

There’s no winning. He slugs back the ember and flops back down, waiting for it to kick in. She’d woken him up three times during the night - less than he’d expected, frankly, given the dense, clinging horror that kept pinning him down - and he _feels_ it.

“If you’re up for it, there’s...something I want you to see.” Aloy taps her fingers along her potions belt, and then rearranges something in her bag.

He isn’t up for it. He isn’t up for anything. He really just wants to sleep for a year, but...it’s Aloy, so he hauls his corpse upright and awkwardly bundles his possessions together.

Outside, the air is biting and dry. It’s cold, a dull layer of clouds hanging on the mountain above. “Snow later,” Aloy says.

In the daylight, she looks almost as bad as he feels. The cut on her forehead has bloomed into a spectacular bruise that matches the gray circles under her eyes. “You didn’t sleep. You should have let me-”

“Neither of us are in good shape,” she says quietly. “Let’s just leave it, okay?”

“The gate-”

“I told Varl we couldn’t help. He didn’t argue.”

Last night, Aloy yelled and Erend had a panic attack. Of course Varl didn’t argue.

“Come on,” she says. “”Let’s get out of here.”

 

****

 

They follow a narrow path. At the top, there’s a sturdy little house tucked against a sheer cliff. The timbers are still lashed together, but there’s obviously been seasons of neglect: the roof is starting to slump in on itself, weeds and vines eagerly reclaiming the porch and chimney.

The look Aloy gives him is full of quiet significance, and then Erend realizes: this is where she grew up.

This is her home.

He can’t breathe. Heavy snowflakes are starting to fall, adding to the drifts already mounded around the solid log fence. Everything is rustic but solid, and in places that the sun can’t reach, there’s faded paint in all the shades of a clear summer sky.

“He made this,” she says quietly. “All of it, by himself.”

Erend thinks of a man he can’t picture, chopping wood as a red-haired hellion of a child scrambled around behind him.

His heart shivers in his chest, overwhelmed with an odd mixture of sorrow and unexpected want.

 _Marry me_.

His legs start to move, and he shuffles through the snow. He’s not searching for anything in particulars, just...looking. Learning. It’s so different from Eleuthia, but it’s so _Aloy_. Both places held her, and when he turns to look at her, standing in the middle of the yard, her face wistful as snowflakes tuck themselves into her hair, he can see it all.

There’s a Grazer made from sticks and rope, its back broken by either force or age. A wooden target lies on its back near the fence, its circles weatherworn and pale. Erend slowly takes the heavy stone steps to the house’s porch. By the door, there’s a woodpile, still neatly stacked despite the moss draped on its top. A collection of woven baskets rot on the other side, the ragged remains of some kind of leather bag molding in the corner. A braided string of machine-plate shards hangs from one of the rafters, twisting slowly in the breeze.

He wants to go in, but the roof has collapsed against the door, barring it from the inside. It feels like an unimaginable tragedy, to be so close to where she once slept, but unable to actually see.

Time only moves one way. He suddenly misses this place with the same intensity he misses Ersa. This was never his to grieve, but he wants to scream at its loss.

The snow fills his footprints. Aloy calmly waits, and when Erend wanders back, she reaches out for his hand. “Over here,” she says. Her voice is hushed in the thick, quiet air.

He follows her with his heart in his throat, because somehow, he _knows_.

There’s a large stone raised on its end. She takes off her Focus and tucks it into its pouch. “This,” she says quietly, “is Rost.”

There’s a distant urge to make a joke – _you took me home to meet your dad_ – but it dies before it’s even fully formed.

She kneels down, brushing snow off the stone. “This is the last time I’m coming here," she whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

The words aren’t for Erend, and even if they were, she wouldn’t be telling him anything he didn’t already know.

Erend knows what that’s like. He’ll probably have to return to the Claim at some point – it’s an entire region; the possibility is unavoidable – but he’d be okay if laying Ersa to rest was his last. It’s a hard mix of sadness and relief, of letting go of something that’s buried deep in his bones. It’s something that’s constant and irretrievable, something that simultaneously clings and crushes.

He eased down beside her. “Will you tell me about him?” he asks quietly. “You don’t have to…but I’d like that.”

“He was always going to be outcast,” she says. “The day I left for the Proving, he said he could never speak to me again, but I…I told him I’d come back. I’d talk to him, but he didn’t have to answer. I’d the one breaking the law.” She takes a long, shuddery breath. “And then after…I couldn’t come back, but....I still talked to him. I told him about everything that was going on.” She glances at Erend shyly. “I told him about you.”

“What’d you say?”

“I said I had hope.”

He makes himself say it. “Sometimes, I talk to Ersa.”

“Does she ever answer?”

“I want her to.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Me too.”

They sit there in the quiet, snow settling in damp clusters around them. They’re all three of them still, Erend, Aloy and the stone for the man who raised her.

“What did he look like?” Erend asks. “You saw Ersa, even if it wasn’t- even if it wasn’t her best.”

“Tall,” Aloy says. “Strong. He had huge hands, these great big hands, and he could do anything. He could make anything. He built this place, but it was so much more than that. He was so smart. He knew every herb. He could track everything, and he didn’t need a Focus to do it.” She shakes her head. “He had this beard he kept braided, and he was so insistent on wearing paint. I asked him once why he did that if the tribe had cast him out, and he said there were still customs to keep. He was like that. He was more Nora than anyone actually in the tribe.”

She takes a breath. “He always said All-Mother was working through me, and I always said I hunted alone. He always said that saying that made me alone.” She frowns. “He’d chosen to be outcast. He was grateful for it. He’d made his peace. I was always so angry. I never had that choice. I’m not Rost. I won’t ever be.”

“You don’t have to be,” Erend says.

“I _wanted_ to,” she admits. “He told me that if I won the Proving, the Matriarchs would grant me a boon, and I was sure, I was _so sure_ , that I could find out about my mother. Training for the Proving was my entire _life_ , and I did win, Erend, I _won_ , but she- she barely had time to declare me a brave, and then _Eclipse_ -”

Eclipse, who saw her through Olin’s Focus. HADES knew who she was immediately, and ordered her executed along with the man who raised her and half their tribe.

She’d spared Olin’s life, but sitting here in the ruins of her home, Erend isn’t sure it was the right choice.

It’s another justice that isn’t his to dispense.

“This isn’t home,” Aloy says quietly. “Not anymore. Not without Rost.” She reaches over for his hand. “I’m not coming back.”

Erend squeezes her fingers.

“Do you ever think you’ll go back to the Claim?” she asks.

His entire body is suddenly cold and shaking, but she’s looking at him with copper-green eyes, and she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. She’s light and life and he owes her _everything_ , and he loves her so very, very much. “No. Well...”

She waits, her head cocked like a curious bird.

 _Marry me_ , he wants to say. They’re sitting in front of the grave of her father amid the bones of her home, and if there’s ever a time to do it, if there’s ever a time to tell her he loves her and wants to be with her forever, now is it.

_Marry me. Marry me and you’ll never be alone. I don’t care what happens. I don’t care where we go. I’ll build you a hearth that we can take with us. HEPHAESTUS, GAIA, the other subroutines: I’m with you. You’re all I’m ever going to want and if you claim me, I’ll follow you to my last breath._

_Let me take you to Mainspring. We can stand in front of the ealdormen, and then piss on their boots if we don’t like what they say. We don’t need them. We don’t need anyone. The only thing I’ve ever needed is you, so tell me you’ll marry me, Aloy._

His blood churns through his veins, and he doesn’t understand how he can be frozen and burning at the same time. There’s the hearth, and suddenly, there’s the red-haired child he _can’t_ want, he can’t even _think_ about. He isn’t his father, but he _is_ his father, and the seed of his family tree is _poison-_

He doesn’t dare. He _doesn’t_.

“No,” he hears himself say. “There’s nothing.”

The snow falls between them. 


	51. Chapter 51

The snow, at first a fluffy blanket, is starting to accumulate into something much more fierce, and eventually Aloy rises to her feet, pressing her palm against the stone’s carved face. She opens her mouth, but there's nothing that can be said, so she just gently wipes away the snow and leans over to touch her forehead to the clean circle.

“If I say I love you,” she whispers to the man who isn’t here, “I hope you know that that means.”

Stepping back, she shakes herself a little and tucks all her gear into place. Slinging her longbow across one shoulder and her spear across the other, she turns her face to Erend. “If we don't start back, we'll get stuck in this snow.”

He doesn't want to go back. He wants to linger here like he did in Eleuthia. He wants to spend a day here, or a hundred. He wants to fix the roof and clean the weeds away, light the fire in the half-buried stones and set standing the parts of the fence on the verge of collapse.

He wants to sit here with Rost while Aloy sleeps in the flickering dark. Erend wants to tell this man he's never met that the woman he raised is a brilliant light in a world that's black as coal dust and just as choking. He wants to tell Rost how Aloy saves everyone, how it's an unconscious reflex, an instinct so deep she doesn't bother to question it. He wants to tell Rost about HADES, and how Aloy is more determined than the next hundred people put together, and more clever than the next thousand.

Well. Rost raised her. He’s the one who did his best to channel this force of nature into adulthood. There is _nothing_ Erend can tell the man who raised her he probably isn’t already long-exasperated by.

He wants to tell Rost how much he loves Aloy. He wants to sit here in freezing, damp snow and tell the man who died protecting her that Erend is dedicated to doing the same. He wants to tell him how Aloy has saved him in ways he can’t even begin to explain. Erend can’t say the words to Aloy - _marry me_ \- but maybe he can say them to Rost. He can’t ask for a blessing from a stone, but he wants to _try_.

“You okay?” Aloy asks quietly.

They’re standing in the ruins of her home, the place that was her whole world until everything exploded around her, and she’s the one asking _him_ if _he’s_ okay.

The thing is, he isn’t. He never is. She comes at him sideways and goes straight for the kidneys every time, and fire and spit, he should _expect_ it by now, but of all the things Erend can’t expect, Aloy is every single one.

“There’s nothing in the Claim,” he tries. “There’s...the house isn’t like this at _all_ -”

There’s a small chance the house he grew up in might have been built with love and skill, but by the time Erend was born, generations of his hard-drinking relatives had ground away any proud spirit left in the timbers. There were always grand plans for restoration, but like all his father’s promises, they settled into dust. His mother did the best she could, but the winters were long and dark, the summers tenuous and strained, and when she was gone, there wasn’t anything left. If there had been a yard to stand in, Erend would never look around in wistful nostalgia. There wasn't a strong, clever man to stack wood perfectly by the fire; there's only the visceral, bone-deep memory of being hungry, cold and afraid. He had dirty knees and terrified eyes, and there weren’t any good places in that teetering shack for two small kids to hide.

If there’s any justice in this world, the roof has blown away and his father is rotting bones, facedown in icy mud by a cracked and empty hearth.

Aloy slips her hand in his, her chilly skin startling him awake. He’s not breathing, the dull roar of another blank moment starting to build in the back of his skull, and he swallows hard against the pressure. “It’s okay,” she says. “I don’t need to see it.”

She’d shown him Sunfall because she wanted him to know exactly who she is, despite being afraid it would drive them apart. Erend doesn’t _care_ what she’d think of the Claim, because he never, _ever_ wants to see that house again. He can’t even go back to burn it down, because he doesn’t _know_ if his father is still alive, and if he _is_ , if he were standing in that door...that’s the one hit Erend absolutely can’t take.

He hadn’t asked when he’d taken Ersa back to Mainspring, and no one had told him. There’s a small terror in not knowing, but the older he gets, the longer he’s in Meridian, that knot slowly, _slowly_ relaxes in the deepest cavern in his chest.

He isn’t his father. Aloy’s seen Erend at his worst, and that’s as much of his upbringing as he _ever_ wants her to know.

Aloy tucks her face against his neck. “Home,” she says quietly.

It jolts him away from the past. His present - his _future_ , that dream he can’t want and can't shake - is a cold nose and warm breath, and he presses his lips into her hair, letting the scent of her surround him like the snowflakes tumbling above. “I love you, too.”

 

****

 

The storm gets lighter further down the mountain, but from the color of the clouds, the valley will be just as frozen by midnight. The afternoon sun is a diffuse glow through wandering fog, the mountain cliffs decisive as they jut into the sky.

They’re almost back to the village when Teb comes running up the path, his face pinched and white. “There you are,” he says, breathing hard. “I thought that’s where you’d- but you’ve got to _leave_ -”

Erend’s stomach plummets into his boots.

“What’s going on?” Aloy’s hands go to her bow. “Another Ravager?”

“People are angry,” the stitcher says. “You need-”

“Yeah, you think I’m in danger, I know.”

“It’s not _like_ that,” Teb snaps.  He locks eyes with Erend. “I told you. You have to leave _now_.”

Aloy’s bristles. “Told him what? Don’t you _dare_ keep me in the dark.”

“It’s not safe,” Teb says. “Aloy, they think you brought the Ravagers.”

Her whole face twists in disgust. “Of course I didn’t.”

“I’m telling you-”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m their stupid Anointed.” She shoves past him. “I _protected_ them. If that’s not enough-”

“We've got help, but not much,” Teb mutters to Erend. “Be ready to run.”

“Ready since yesterday,” Erend confirms. He isn’t, he _isn’t_ \- his head hurts and he’s limping with every limb he’s got - but if this is the hit he’s been waiting for, he’s _ready_. It’s for Aloy.

It’s his choice.

Aloy whirls on them. “This isn’t _funny_. They’re a bunch of blind idiots, and you’re being just as bad as they are, both of you!”

“It’s _Resh_ ,” Teb says.

The name is almost nothing, but Aloy stomps in frustration. “He’s _nothing_. You can’t be serious!”

“I can get you to the gate.” Teb’s voice cracks with anxiety. “If you go _now-_ ”

“No,” Aloy snaps. “I won’t. We’re going to talk this out.”

“We can get to the main gate from here,” Erend says. “Bypass the village-”

“We will _not_ .” This isn't Aloy, the woman in his bed. This is suddenly Aloy, the key to ancient doors and grudging general of a vast machine-killer army, and she is _pissed_.

Erend really, _really_ hopes she's right, because if she's not, this is going to be very ugly and very painful.

Teb isn't a brave. Erend can think of a thousand reasons why the stitcher could be wrong, but every single one dissolves in the face of a single sentence: _her edges and ours will never align._

He can take a hit. It will almost be a mercy for this one to actually fall.

There’s a crowd gathered at the stairs to All-Mother. At the top stands Lansra, the knotted ropes of her elaborate headdress twisting in the wind. By her side is a sour-faced brave. The blue stripes above his right eyebrow amplify his scowl.

“And here she is!” Resh shouts into the blowing snow, making a grand, sweeping gesture. “Let’s hear her account. Aloy, tell us again how these ‘Ravagers’ came to our gates?”

Too many accusing eyes turn as one to focus on Aloy, boiling like metalburn with equal parts fear and anger.

This isn’t good. This is _so_ not good.

Erend grabs at Aloy’s arm, but she shakes him off and hops up onto a rock. “I don’t _know_ ,” she snaps. “They don’t usually come here. These had Corruption burns, so maybe they got left behind when Eclipse-”

“Eclipse!” Resh roars. “She says Eclipse! Who was it that attacked the Proving? Eclipse! And who was the only survivor? This motherless monstrosity standing in our midst.”

“I saved you!” Aloy shouts. “I came when Eclipse attacked-”

“A convenient time!” Resh snarls. “Half our people dead, and you show up at the very end of the battle to claim the victory.”

“I came as soon as I could! I didn’t know they were coming here! If I could have gotten here faster-”

“Your words mean _nothing_.” He looks at Lansra. “Tell them!”

“No,” Aloy hisses. “No, don’t you _dare_ -”

“Motherless!” the old woman crows. “She came from inside the mountain, fully-formed. She cried like a child, but there was no mother to claim her. Is she a blessing from the Goddess, or is she a curse sent by the machines to break our spirits? We’ve taken her into our arms and our hearts-”

“You _didn’t!_ ” Aloy is trembling with fury. “You didn’t do that! You made me outcast. I was a _baby!_ You made sure I knew I wasn’t wanted every single day of my life! ”

Oh fuck-  _no_. She’s just handed them motive. She isn’t paying attention. She’s embracing the same willful ignorance that they are, and it’s going badly, it’s going _so_ badly-

Ice-cold, Erend tugs on her arm. “Aloy, this isn’t working. We need to go.”

“Shut up,” she snaps. “This is stupid. They’re going to listen.”

Teb’s winding his way to the far edge of the crowd, his eyes never leaving Erend.

“My _sisters_ were blind to your curse,” Lansra says, baring her teeth. “Nora, we lost loved ones to the Red Raids, but we defended ourselves! The moment this cursed one entered our midst, an entire generation of our children were cut down. We cast her out, and when she dared come back, so much blood was spilled that our land still lies stained and fallow. All-Mother is not meant to open. The light that comes out is red as blood, and her walls are brutally shoved apart with no regard to sanctity or tradition. This time, a _man!_ An _outlander_ , brought into our most sacred space, our protests swept aside.”

Erend wants to throw up. It looks like that, it _does-_

“The Goddess punishes us for Aloy’s transgressions. What is an eclipse, but the sun going dark?”

“They were after the Sun King!” Aloy shouts, but it’s lost in the swelling agreement of the crowd.

This isn’t happening. “Aloy, it’s not working,” Erend says urgently. “We have-”

She puts a hand on his forehead and shoves him down. “I came to _stop_ Eclipse!”

“The Goddess punishes _us_ ,” Lansra’s saying. “She punishes us for worshipping a false idol, for allowing our braves to break taboo and leave our sacred land to die on faithless soil. How many of us are left? Look around, my children. My _sisters_ would have you believe this thing is Anointed, but I will not let my sons and daughters be killed any longer.”

 _Harbinger of death_.

“We need to go,” Erend croaks. Across the crowd, Teb is completely white, and when he catches Erend’s eyes, he gives one single nod, and disappears into the crush of people.

“I'm not going,” Aloy snaps. “This is stupid. They’re going to listen-”

“Aloy, we have to go _now.”_ She’s going to hate this. He squares his shoulders and raises his arms to bodily haul her away-

He hears it before he feels it: a solid thump in his shoulder, the shocked rush of breath as it’s punched from his lungs. The ground reaches up to slowly draw him down, river-worn gravel and icy snow scattering at the impact.

He doesn't realize exactly what's happened until he hears Aloy _scream_ , a sharp, startled cry ripped from her throat.

His gambeson is called arrow-breaker, but at this range, he might as well be naked.


	52. Chapter 52

He’s facedown in the dirt, the world roaring and spinning as he frantically tries to remember how to breathe. His first gasp is nothing but dust and pebbles, his throat clenched tight at the assault.

He’s distantly aware of an explosion of pandemonium around him. Aloy is _screaming_ , screaming as she tries to haul him up, screaming at the crowd, the hard pressure of her hand around the arrow shaft.

“Go,” he croaks into the mud. “Have to _go-_ ”

He's failing at this. This isn't how it’s supposed to go. He had five separate exit strategies, and every single one is useless ash. He needs to get up - he _has_ to get up - but his body is a loose collection of unrelated parts. There’s blood on the ground and blood in his mouth, and Aloy is making a noise he’s never, _ever_ wanted to hear her make.

Get up. Get _up_. Incompetent inconsiderate stupid _marry me marry me_ come _on-_

On the other side of the village, a fireball blooms from one of the ruined homes with the sudden whoosh of ignited blaze, and any semblance of order in the crowd is utterly lost.

Pain sets in, sharp and urgent, and Erend’s head begins to clear. He heaves himself to his elbows and then to his knees, nausea rising bitter in his throat.

He’s seen Aloy fight worse odds a dozen times. Amid the scraps of memory from the Spire, he remembers her terrified but fiercely determined, and even when the sky went red and dark, she hadn’t lost herself.

Now, she’s clutching blindly at him, shocked tears streaming down her face. Her freckles glow like confused sparks abruptly sent spinning from their fire.

Varl’s suddenly on his other side, his spear raised as Sona solidly plants herself between Erend and the crowd, bow nocked and ready.

“You have to leave,” Varl is saying. “Aloy, you have to leave now.”

“Mounts,” Erend manages. “Aloy-"

“Accident,” she stammers. “It's an accident-”

“This was no accident,” Sona snaps. “A bow cannot be shot without intent and you know it, girl. Let’s _go_.”

Aloy bobs helplessly in place, her hands fisted in the bloody mess of Erend’s sleeve.

Varl hefts Erend’s other arm over his shoulder, and then Erend’s somehow staggering to his feet. “We can get you to the gate,” Varl mutters, “but if we leave, they won't let us back in, and we need to help calm this. Lansra _doesn't_ speak for me.”

“I didn't,” Aloy repeats blankly. “I didn't call them-”

Sona’s words flash out like the sharp crack of flesh on flesh. “Pull yourself together or we all four die!”

Erend lurches forward. “Let's go.”

“You-” Aloy starts.

“I love you,” he says. “I love you so very, very much, and we need to _go_.”

Somehow, they make it to the gate. Varl pushes them through, thrusting a travel pack into Aloy’s arms. “I'm sorry,” he blurts. “Aloy, I'm so sorry.”

They’d suspected this would happen, and they’d had supplies ready. Erend immediately forgives Varl for everything he's ever said.

“Teb doesn’t have enough blaze to keep them distracted for long,” Sona says tightly. “We cannot help you further. If you have any sense at all, don’t ever come back.” Her face crumbles a little, a wall of stone staggered by an avalanche. “Goddess bless and protect you both.”

Aloy isn’t moving, her face blank and lost. She wavers like a leaf in a high breeze, one hand gone to the grip of her longbow and the other still clenched in Erend’s sleeve.

His stomach is clogging his throat, his eyes swelling and flooded. She’s still not letting herself see what’s going on, and neither of them are going to make it out if they don’t _run_.

Erend is brute force. He’s solid muscle. He knows how to get hit and keep moving, and right now, that’s exactly what he has to do. If they don’t get out of here now, he’s going to lose everything he’s ever loved. Nothing else matters.

He grabs her arm and gives a sharp tug. She turns, startled, and when he takes that first step, instinct finally kicks in.

He’s not as fast as she is. He’s got an arrow in his shoulder and a bad leg, but the woman he loves is running for her life, and so is he.  

 

****

 

He has no faith they aren’t being followed. It would be nothing for Lansra to declared all her bloodthirsty supporters Seekers, and send them beyond the gates to cleanse the curse from the Embrace.

He tucks himself into the back of his mind and lets his body do what it knows how to do. He has no other option. He fucking _hurts_ , and every step is like getting shot all over again. At the Spire, he curled around Aloy and made himself into a protective carapace as the balustrades went to gravel around them. Now, he does the same thing, loping behind her as best he can and pushing her along when she tries to stop.

Erend concentrates on the ache from his clenched jaw. He knows pain. He knows muscle. He’s a soldier, and before that, he was a big kid with an angry father. He’s learning to be smart, but what he’s best at is being hit. He wouldn’t call it tough; tough meat resists the knife, and Erend knows better than to resist. He takes the force of the blow and absorbs it. He takes the pain and lets it pass through. His body is a conduit, hollow and efficient. It’s _hard,_  but it’s familiar, and he has a lifetime of practice.

Aloy is fire, consuming everything in her path. Aloy is coursing water, punching her way through any obstruction. Resistance is folded into her steel. She tries to stop a dozen times, but they can’t afford it. Not when Erend is slow and the Nora would kill her for just existing.

He doesn’t remember passing out, but when he come to, he’s sprawled in a copse of trees beside the road, awkwardly rolled on his side. Aloy is slicing the arrowhead off with expert precision, her face bloodless and blank.

“Went straight through,” he offers. “But if it’s easier, just take the arm.” It’s almost not a joke.

“Don’t,” Aloy says tightly. “Just- don’t.”

He has to laugh, because if he can’t, he’s going to start screaming and he’s never going to stop.

She can’t cut through his gambeson without sawing most of his shoulder along with it, and he can’t get it off without the arrow gone. He takes a breath and then she’s yanking it out, the shaft slipping easily through the blood.

Erend knows how to take a hit, but _fuck_. He’s trying to breathe through it, but it hurts, it really, really fucking _hurts_ , and despite himself, what comes out is a ragged, drooling series of gasps.

His arm is useless. She knows the ties of his gambeson like her own braids, but her hands are shaking almost as much as he is. He doesn’t remember losing his scarf, but she balls it around her fingers and presses it against the wound. There’s not as much blood as he feels like there should be, but there’s still a _lot_.

They need to keep moving. He makes himself sit up, and muscles through the cloying black. There’s a boulder nearby, and he shifts against it.  

“Drink this,” Aloy says, and his good hand clenches around a vial. There’s no way he can moderate, and he downs the entire thing. He’s shivering so hard it almost goes dribbling down his chin.

Hintergold _._ Thank the _forge_.

She puts her entire weight behind the bandage, and he leaves his body, watching her from behind a veil of dancing stars. He wants to help, wants to do whatever it takes to chase the horrifying blankness from her face, but he can’t actually move.

When it’s done, she sits there, her breath hard in her throat, and then lurches to her feet. She disappears behind a tree, and he hears her throw up. The hintergold is starting to kick in, and he lets his head loll back against the stone. This isn’t at all how he’d wanted it to go, and if he had anything left in his body, he’d be puking too.

When she’s done, she comes back shakily wiping a sleeve across her mouth. “We can’t stop,” he says.

Her voice is rough and clenched. “Are you sure? We can-”

“Aloy.” His heart is fractured in his chest, shattered pieces lodged in lungs too swollen to breathe. He loves her. He loves her so much it can’t be contained in his meager body. He’s terrified of his own fury, of the frozen, shaking anger crystallized in his bones. This shouldn't have gone this way. She deserves so much more, but she didn't get it.

He reaches for her hand and she automatically helps him stagger to his feet. “I’m okay.” He isn’t. Neither is she. It’s a lie hanging off them like rotting flesh, but it’s all they’ve got right now, and it _has_ to get them through.

He doesn’t know where they’ll end up. He doesn’t really have a destination in mind. His animal instinct is pushing them to Daytower. Sona was confident the Nora wouldn’t follow them outside the walls of their territory, but Erend isn’t going to bet Aloy’s life on that, and the sooner he gets her out of the Embrace, the sooner his heart might stop pounding in his throat.

“Striders,” she says dully. “Saw some back there.”

Just the _thought_ of jostling on a machine makes his legs go to water, but it’s the fastest way they’ll get out of here. Even if they stumble into an entire band of Thunderjaws, there’s a strong chance a Strider can outrun them.

“Yeah,” he says. “Can you?”

She nods once, and disappears into the tall grass with her spear.

He lets himself slide back down against the stone. He definitely doesn’t pass out again - he just closes his eyes for a bare moment, that's all - but then the over-loud thud of his heart in his ears suddenly turns into something far more terrifying and real.

It’s a Sawtooth, stomping through the trees. An actual Sawtooth, and it’s here, and it’s _staring right at him_.

He takes a deep breath and slowly reaches for the axe he’s not at all sure he can lift. There’s no way he makes it through this, but if he’s got more luck than he thinks he does - if he’s got more luck than fate has allowed this week - he can at least take the beast with him when he goes.

 _Fuck_.

His eyes spark hot and wet. He really wanted to marry her. He really, _really_ wanted that future.

He hauls himself to his feet, swaying in place and steeling himself for the inevitable as the Sawtooth’s spinning jaws fill his vision.

And then _Aloy_ is there, putting herself under his arm and taking his weight-

 _No_. This isn’t happening. She’s not supposed to be here for this. She _can’t_. “You have to-” he croaks.

“It’s fine,” she says. “It’s fine. Erend, _look_.”

He does. He makes his pounding head turn on his aching neck, and that’s when he sees the long, shimmering ropes curling out from the beast’s chest. The Sawtooth gnashes its teeth and hops a little in place, but its lens is calm and blue.

“I got us a ride,” she says hoarsely.

The roar of his own blood overwhelms his sense, and if he stays on his feet, it’s because he’s wrapped himself around her, as lightheaded and boneless as that day at the Spire.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t think-”

She didn't think. “A Sawtooth,” he manages. “Seriously?”

“I couldn’t get to the Striders.”

He lets his head fall onto her shoulder, furious and relieved and so very, very in love with this utterly insane, wild-haired woman. He can’t decide whether to scream or cry, and he ends up laughing, great shuddering gasps into the warmth of her neck. “You couldn’t...”

“They were across the river. This was right there.” She takes a short hiccup of a breath. “And it’s _faster_.”

So, they ride a Sawtooth. It is indeed faster, and it is absolutely knocking the teeth from his jaws. Tucked behind the crest of its neck, Erend leans on Aloy’s back and lets her steer.

This is not going to help her reputation at _all_ , and that makes him laugh all over again, tears streaming down to mingle with his blood damp on her hood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Asdflkjlkjg the COMMENTS you people are insane and I love you so very, very much. Life has been beating me with a tire iron lately and this is my escape. It blows me away that y'all are still hanging in there. 
> 
> You: excellent, lovely, wonderful people  
> Me: cave gremlin, shoving chapters out because I show my unending affection through abject torture and pain.
> 
> I'm working through a bunch of stuff I've got mostly-written - hence the manic posting, sorry, must all be shoved out the door as soon as it's dry, I've got zero chill - so...that's a thing. Barreling toward Frozen Wilds at this point.


	53. Chapter 53

The journey to Daytower is largely silent. He leans against her, sliding in and out of sleep as they bounce across rough terrain. He should be awake, he should be keeping watch, but he’s clinging to her with all the strength of his good arm, and trying to breathe as the machine leaps beneath them.

He sees the sun slide below the horizon, the bloody sky fading to black as night sets in. He watches the sharp sliver of moon blunted and consumed by scudding clouds.

“We should camp,” he says, but she either ignores him or the words are lost in the Sawtooth’s clanking movement.

Around dawn, she finally pulls the Sawtooth to a stop. He stumbles into the bushes to pee, and almost falls on his face. Coming back, she pokes at his bandage with trembling fingers.

“Need to eat something,” he reminders her, but neither of them have the stomach for it. He makes himself drink, but the water sits heavily with the hintergold.

They ride. It rains, the drops so fiercely cold he really doesn’t understand why they aren’t actually snow. The sky plunges down thick and gray, and he tucks his head into the nape of her neck, the wet strings of her hair slapping against his scalp.

He’d hated riding the Charger, and he _really_ hates the Sawtooth. It’s a completely unnatural movement, and it jostles his shoulder and his leg and everything in between. It hurts so much that the fact he’s _riding a machine_ almost stops being terrifying. He closes his eyes and concentrates on the scent of her, warm and damp and familiar.

“I love you,” he mumbles. He’s not sure if she hears it or not.

 

****

 

He thinks there might be another day, or maybe two. The hintergold takes the pain and puts it outside his body, but it dissolves any sense of time. He feels like he’s barely gotten on the Sawtooth when Aloy is hauling him back down to check the bandage and pour water and more hintergold into him. He pushes back and tries to get her to rest, but she pointedly ignores him.

Finally, he’s lucid enough to catch her cheek with his good hand, cupping it in his palm. “Please eat something,” he says.

She twitches away, shaking her head, and he catches a whiff of something on her breath: thaw omen. He isn’t good with herbs, but this is one he _definitely_ knows. It’s a mild antiseptic, but it’s functionally useless on the battlefield. It has a near-twin that’s deadly poison, and during the push to Meridian, he’d seen the two confused often enough that he’d told his men to avoid it entirely.

It’s also a strong stimulant, and right now, Aloy absolutely reeks of it. He trusts her skill with herbs, but he _doesn’t_ trust that she’s paying enough attention right now.

She sees him staring, and holds more hintergold to his lips. “Drink.”

“Be _careful_ ,” he says quietly. “Please.”

Something about choices hangs between them, unsaid. They’re running hard and fast, and there isn’t time to second-guess.

He hauls himself back onto the Sawtooth, tucking his good arm around her waist. She’s a single point of warmth and light in the overwhelming darkness. _Marry me_ , he tries to say, but the hintergold is already soaked into his mouth. Instead, he just hangs on as they charge into the night, and prays for mercy from forces he doesn’t think exist.

 

****

 

They’re almost to Daytower when a storm blows with the raging fury of a Thunderjaw’s roar. The sun disappears around noon, and Aloy somehow spots a shallow cave just before they lose complete visibility. Their Sawtooth mount stomps around at the mouth, oblivious to the weather.

It’s cold. They’re both damp with melting snow, The cave isn’t more than a glorified niche, shallow enough that the shrieking wind still swirls inside, stealing their breath and any chance of a fire.

Erend feels more wretched than he’s ever been in his entire life. His shoulder throbs with every heartbeat. He's absolutely freezing, the hintergold barely holding its own, and he slumps in his soggy furs, more heavy clot than man.

Nothing compares to Aloy. She hasn’t said more than the barest necessity for days, and she’s so tightly brittle he’s afraid to even breathe. He's sure she hasn't slept, and her gaze is starting to flick into the shadows, tracking things he doesn't think are there.

She’s trying to pass the time by making arrows, but it’s so _cold_. Erend’s entire body is a mottle of pain and numbness, and she’s jittery and not wearing any gloves. It’s almost inevitable: the knife slips, and suddenly, there’s blood on her shaking hands.

There’s a long frozen moment, and then she clenches in on herself, something huge and terrifying shredding its way out of her throat. It’s a wild, animal wail that deafens the storm and has absolutely nothing to do with the knife.

He knows this. He _knows_ -

He can’t touch her. It claws at him, but she’s still got the knife and he is very sure it will end up in his neck if he reaches out.

She screams into her knees, her knuckles white around dripping red. She screams until her voice cracks, and then she’s crying, huge gasping sobs into the cage of her arms, her whole body convulsing.

Eventually, she goes quiet, wracked with miserable little hiccups, and wordlessly offers her hand for his waiting bandage. She’s gotten blood on her face, and he gently wipes it away.

It’s not over. He knows it’s not. It won’t ever be over. It’s an abscess. It’s an infection that eats away, and even if it’s lanced and open to the air, it’s tissue that will never be heal. He’d had Ersa cruelly ripped away, and there will always be a sister-sized cavern in his chest. This isn’t what he’d want for anyone, and _especially_ not for Aloy. The world has taken a brutal swing at the center of life and light and heat, and the word _furious_ is impotent in the face of what he feels.  

The world is featureless and dark. He wraps the furs around them both, and tucks her hands against his chest.

 

****

 

He drifts in and out. When he closes his eyes, he sees her bloody hands, but he's too frozen to move. The blood pumps freely, spilling over her wrists and making bright puddles in the snow. She screams and screams at him, but he's utterly helpless.

She wakes him up with eyes that aren’t her own. Everything about her is tilted askew. He can't see Aloy: there's someone else there instead, someone wearing her skin, exhausted, strung-out and shattered.

He knows that person. He's _been_ that person. That day at the gate, he’d been running on more booze than blood, and she’d hit him like a Watcher. She’d been the one to drag him back to himself, and whatever it takes, he has to return the favor. He _wants_ to return the favor. Every breath in his lungs, every drop of his blood: it's hers, all hers if it can help.

It’s hers even if it can’t help. It’s hers for the taking any way she wants, and it’s been that way since the day they met.

This is the one hit he can’t take for her, and it’s the one he most desperately wants to take. Instead, he curls himself around her, hoping the heat of his nascent fever can provide some tiny portion of comfort.

 

****

 

The storm hasn’t completely died, but they have to go. They don’t have a choice. They’re running out of supplies. Erend’s starting to feel a shivery ache deep in his bones, and Aloy has been painfully restless for hours. She’s had her Focus on the whole time, scrubbing her hands through her hair over and over and over again.

It’s been _way_ too long since he took a hit of hintergold. Aloy’s taken some melted snow and swished it around in the empty vials, but it isn’t nearly enough.

He wants a drink. He wants a thousand drinks. He wants to open his throat and just keep pouring until his body is a distant afterthought. He wants to let the sharp taste sweep him into the dark. He shakes from the ache of it.

Well. He’s shaking from a lot of things, and he’s almost to the point where just outright dying would seem a viable and welcome alternative. He fucking _hurts_ , but Aloy is here, barely-contained apocalyptic destruction, and if there was a way to take on her pain as his own, he’d do it with his next breath.

Staying still is excruciating, and so is moving, just in a different way. They bundle up their damp belongings and Aloy gingerly approaches the Sawtooth. Erend wonders suddenly if the reason she’s not letting herself sleep is because she doesn’t know how long she can keep the beast pacified.

It doesn’t make him feel better.

The road is narrow and hugs the edge of the mountain. Between the snow on the ground and the snow swirling in the air, it’s almost impossible to see. Aloy keeps the Sawtooth at a slow plod, draped down its broad neck to peer at the path ahead. Erend finds a slot in the machine’s architecture that won’t pinch his hand as it moves, and tries not to pass out.

By the time Daytower looms into sight, the snow has lightened considerably. The beacons flare orange and welcoming, and he’s never been so glad to see fire in his entire life.

Aloy pulls the Sawtooth to a hard stop at the gate. The beast looks up at the guards and gnashes its teeth, the blades spinning ominously. She slides down and Erend follows her, stars whirling in his vision. He leans hard against the side of the machine, the rush of coolant loud in his ears.

She tugs him away, and he lets his legs fold beneath him. The ground is cold, the hard-packed earth webbed with filaments of ice.

“There aren’t enough up there,” she mutters. “I want every single one to see.”

He squints. He counts five guards, but he knows they’re scrambling. “Give them a minute. There’ll be a lot more.” The Sawtooth is a terrifying vision - it’ll be a rare sight so close to the garrison - but Aloy’s hair is a bright flag in the wind, and they’ll have _no_ idea what to do with her.

Erend has no idea what to do with Aloy, and he loves her so very, very much. They’re both ground down to bare ore, and the agony of her grief claws at him. He just wants to go back to Meridian, to take her home and wrap himself around her until the sharp edges of her pain start to ease.

There are several long, cloudless breaths, the air stealing the moisture even before it’s left their mouths. In short order, the five guards at the Daytower gate are joined by another six.

When she’s sure she has their attention, Aloy steps toward the Sawtooth, reaching underneath and in one smooth movement, yanking its heart from its core. The machine twitches as if surprised, takes a few disjointed, sputtering steps, and then collapses, groaning, into a sparking heap.

“I need help,” she announces hoarsely. “This is my payment.”

Her audience stares, stunned mute.

“You all just saw what I’m capable of,” she snaps, and then points to Erend. “If he dies, I will do _so_ much worse.”

There's a long moment when no one moves, and then she crumples in on herself like a discarded cloth.

He should catch her, Erend thinks, but he’s lost all feeling in his limbs, and the world is spinning into black.

 

****

 

Erend’s had covetous dreams about the small inn, but they must be in worse shape than he’s thought, because when he opens his eyes, he’s staring at the arched stone ceiling of Daytower’s infirmary. His body is warm and heavy with hintergold, and it’s such a _relief_ that he feels the hot slide of tears seeping from his eyes.

Fear stabs through him, and he hauls himself upright. Aloy is curled in the next cot, the wild blaze of her hair escaping the mound of blankets like boiling smoke. He desperately wants to touch her, to press himself against her back and make himself into a hard shield between her and the rest of the world, but sitting up is more than he can handle, and he’s back down on the pillow, the room whirling around him.

Everything is a vague blur. Either he's on too much hintergold or he's more feverish than he thinks, because the waking world mixes with the horror in his mind and he stays locked in the liminal space between.

He hears the healers talk. Aloy hasn't slept in four days. She's running a fever and belligerently delirious. Erend isn’t fighting anyone, but he isn’t much better. “Infected,” the healer pronounces to his assistant, “but less than I’d expect.”

He thinks of his leg, of the huge chunk of missing muscle and Aloy leaning over him, her hand fisted hard in his hair.

They’re out of the Embrace. That’s the thing that matters the most, and his next task is to not die. He’s pretty sure he can handle that.

****

 

At some point, he hears Aloy make a choking sound, and the healer is right there with a bucket as she throws up.

It's the start of a very bad day.

The words claw their way from his mouth. “Thaw omen.” She looks so  _awful_  that all he can think of is the poison look-alike, clenching panic slicing right through the hintergold.

“We know,” the healer’s assistant says calmly. “She overdosed. She'll come through.”

They try to get some water in her, but nothing stays down. It’s hours and hours of uncontrollable misery, until all that’s left is half-coherent tears and empty foam. He ends up leaning against her, her head between his knees and her hair tucked in his arms, propped together like the two sides of an arch as her body wrings itself dry.

It ends slowly. He doesn’t know exactly when or how, but when he wakes up, he’s wrapped around her in her cot. She’s damp and boneless with exhaustion, but she’s finally asleep. She’s alive. They both are.

It’s a huge victory. Something comes unclenched in his chest, and he lets himself slide back into the hintergold, the warmth of her body against his and the familiar, beloved tangle of her hair in his nose.


	54. Chapter 54

Aloy sleeps. Erend tests the bounds of wakefulness, and finds it mostly acceptable.

“Could have been worse,” the healer says as he changes the bandage. “You shouldn’t lose any movement in your arm. You’re damn lucky.”

It’s a fear Erend hadn't let himself feel, but there’s a hard stab of anger and guilt amid the relief. He can’t keep relying on luck.

 _You don’t get a third chance_.  

The hintergold feels _amazing_ , but he can feel the fingers of addiction reaching toward it, ready to lovingly draw it in and make it their own. He hates _wanting_. It might be the pain, but it might be the poison vines of his father’s legacy. He can’t tell the difference, so he doesn’t want to feed the hunger, no matter how badly it hurts. He focuses on breathing and directing his attention elsewhere, and tries not to scream.

His bad leg is stiff and aching, so he heaves himself out of bed to stagger around. His arm is bound tightly to his chest; there’s no way he can wear his gambeson this way, much less lace it up, so he wraps himself in a blanket and goes out to wander.

He runs into Balahn almost immediately, and the garrison commander pulls him toward one of the roaring braziers on the ramparts, offering up a mug of tea.

“It’s a relief to see you up and moving, my friend,” Balahn says. “I don’t have to tell you your arrival caused quite an uproar.”

“I can imagine.” The tea is blessedly hot and he wraps his fingers around its warmth. “Were we followed?”

“In that storm?” Balahn shakes his head, one eyebrow raised in incredulity. “I wouldn’t expect anyone for a week or more.” He frowns. “Should your expedition be considered a success?”

Erend chokes back a humorless laugh. He doesn’t know how to explain the enormity of it all. He doesn’t have the vocabulary to convey the betrayal. Aloy is asleep in the infirmary, destroyed in ways he can’t even begin to quantify, and all he can do is bare his teeth in a grin that desperately wants to be filled with Nora blood. “Did you see us come in?”

It's not an answer. Balahn waits.

The Erend who was drunk and stupid would rail against the Nora. He’d spit curses and demand that the entire might of the Sundom complete what both Mad King Jiran and the Eclipse failed to do, and burn the Embrace and all its inhabitants to free-floating ash. He wants to tell Balahn to shut Daytower down like a Snapmaw’s mouth, to turn away any traders from the Sundom and shoot any who approach from the Embrace.

He isn’t that Erend anymore. He’s captain of the Vanguard, protector of the royal family. It _kills_ him, but he can’t start a war over this, even though every drop of his blood is screaming to. “I don’t know if you could call it a civil war,” he says, “but you should caution anyone going into the Embrace.”

Balahn eyes him steadily. “Any particular cause?”

“They’re scared,” he makes himself say. “The Eclipse hit them hard, and Aloy is...Aloy.”

“The Sawtooth,” Balahn says.

“Yeah.” It’s hard to be a goddess, and Aloy is a person. She’s a messy, complicated, beautiful person, and he doesn’t have room in his chest for how much he loves her and how _angry_ he is.

More than that, he’s _scared_. He’s not sure who that arrow was meant for, and he doesn’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t been reaching up to pull her away. He doesn’t know what would have happened if Teb hadn’t warned them, or if Varl and Sona had ended up on the other side.

No, he knows exactly what would have happened. Either he’d have died first and they’d have swarmed her like ants, or _she_ would have died and he’d have lost his mind in retaliation.

He’s so raw and furious that his entire face goes hot and swollen. _Marry me. Marry me right now because we might not get another chance, and I swear on the forge that my life is over without you in it._

“Do we keep traders away?” asks Balahn frankly.

Even with their heavy losses, the Nora are self-sufficient, but the fastest way from Pitchcliff to Meridian is through the Embrace. Pitchcliff is largely Oseram, the gateway to the Claim and the Banuk lands, and Erend can’t starve his own people. “Warn them,” he says, suddenly exhausted down to his bones. “Let them know they’re taking a huge risk. The thing with the Nora...it was specifically with us. Traders might be okay, but I can’t guarantee they won’t be shot on sight.”

Balahn nods. “The word will be passed along.”

They sit together a while longer, the conversation light and spare. Erend stretches his bad leg in front of the brazier, letting the heat burn through the tension in his muscles. More snow is starting to fall, the flakes small and harmless.

He’s drowsing when he hears his name echoing off the stone. “Erend? _Erend?_ ”

He knows that tone. He heard it a week ago, when he was lying facedown in the dirt with his own blood in his mouth.

He heaves himself to his feet. Aloy is standing in the middle of the snowy courtyard, barefoot and wearing only her light sleeping smock. She’s got her shortbow up and nocked, but there’s a blind panic in her face, and her voice is like a lost child trying to be brave.

“Right here,” he says quickly, limping over. “I’m right here.”

Her teeth are chattering hard. “I thought-”

He fumbles with his blanket and slings it over her shoulders. “It’s freezing out here. Let’s get back inside.”

She grabs at his arm. “You were gone, you were-”

“Just went for a walk. Needed to stretch my legs.”

“You didn’t _say_ -” Anger flares up, blown into being by fear.

“You were dead asleep,” he says. “You wouldn’t have heard.”

“You didn’t wake me up-”

“Damn right,” he says. “You look like shit.”

For one very brief moment, there’s a flash of familiar indignation, but he doesn’t even have time to think _there you are_ before it’s buried under an avalanche of distress.

He gets her back inside the infirmary and bundles her up by the squat little stove. The healers are out attending to other needs and she’s still a little too warm, so he fills the kettle and sets it to heat. He snags the chair next to her, scooting close to smooth back the ragged mess of her hair. “I can’t tell you it’s gonna be okay,” he says quietly, “but right now, we’re as safe as we can get until we’re back in Meridian. No machines, no Nora, just Balahn and his garrison.”

“They’ll come,” she mumbles. “They’ll be through-”

“Balahn and his men will keep us safe,” Erend says firmly. “You scared the shit out of them with the Sawtooth, and they’re pissed we got hurt.”

She gingerly reaches out to touch his bandaged shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I woke up, and...I couldn’t stop-”

“I know,” he says. He can’t even count how many times he’s woken up from her bleeding and dying, and then buried himself in the comfort of her warm, living body

She shudders, and for a moment, he thinks she’s going to be sick again. Instead, she presses a hand to her face, tears leaking out around her fingers. “I just want to go home.” It’s not a quiet declaration; it’s small and almost plaintive, a child’s arms thrown up against an unexpected blow.

He can’t handle plaintive, not from this wild-haired woman who is light and heat and everything good he’s ever known. He reaches out and tugs her against him, and she lets him, her breath hot and damp against his neck.

If he were Charming Oaf, he’d point out that she called Meridian _home_. He’d tease her about settling down like he’d once teased about her saying she was _with_ him. He can’t do that now. He’s not Charming Oaf anymore, and nothing about this is funny. Instead, he presses his lips to her forehead, rocking a little like Ersa used to do when they were too young to run. “As soon as we’re back on our feet,” he promises. “We’ll go where it’s warm and safe, and we can hide in the house and never, ever come out.”

“Nothing’s safe,” she mumbles. “Nothing.”

“Our place is a fortress,” he says. “Remember what I said? My town. My ground. Nothing happens without me knowing it, and nothing - I mean _nothing_ , not the Eclipse, not the Nora, not HEPHAESTUS or anything else - is going to take us down.”

She shoves herself away. “You can’t _say_ that.”

“What do you want me to say?” he asks. “Fire and spit, Aloy, I’m just as scared as you. I know our odds, but I’m _gonna_ say that, because if I don’t…”

If he doesn’t, he’s just going to take her and run. They’ll go somewhere no one can find them - past the Claim, past the Embrace, south or north or the Forbidden West - and they’ll hide out for the rest of their lives. He’ll build the safest fucking hearth that has ever been built, and they can have a dozen children and die without ever seeing anyone else. HEPHAESTUS will take over, and the world will be slowly eaten.

“Don’t lie,” she says.

“It’s not a lie. It’s as near a promise as I can make.”

“It’s just words.”

He isn’t good with words, but when he’s beaten half to bare meat and barely standing upright, they’re all he’s got. The things he wants most to say are the things he can’t seem to shove out of his mouth, and she’s such a roiling ball of frustration and trauma right now that he’s absolutely sure he shouldn’t say anything at all.

“Come back to bed,” he says quietly. “The sooner we’re walking, the sooner we can put some distance between us and here.”

She’s a volatile mix of heavy-lidded fatigue and tangled emotion, but she doesn’t resist. He’s not particularly tired, but he needs to be here like he’s needed a drink, and he pulls the blankets over them both. She presses herself hard against his side, her face damp against his neck.

 

****

 

Neither of them are in immediate danger of dying, so Erend secures a room in the little inn. He offers up his shards, but the innkeeper, a hardy little Carja man, shakes his head and shoves them back across the table. He won’t say why, but Erend has a suspicion it’s a combination of Balahn’s generosity and the general fear that Aloy’s struck into the entire garrison.

If it gets them a quiet room and a decent bath, he’s not going to complain.

Aloy immediately collapses into bed, and sleeps for almost three days straight. Erend oils his gambeson and tries not to tear the fragile scar tissue slowly knotting in his shoulder. The water is glacier-melt, but he doesn’t care: it’s enough just to be able to scrub the dirt and blood and sweat from his skin. He shaves with one hand and manages not to cut himself too badly, and when he’s done, he sits by the stove and lets himself breathe.

She wakes up slowly. There’s balance in everything, and she’s pushed herself so hard in one direction that the backlash is brutal. She’s slept, but she hasn’t rested, and the rare moments she’s awake, she drifts around in an indistinct haze.

On the third day, she seems a little more coherent. He gets food - a hearty Oseram-style stew from a vendor he’s incredibly pleased to have found - and she manages a few disinterested bites.

She disappears into the washroom for a long time. When she comes out, the first thing he notices is that her damp hair is completely undone. All of her braids are gone, the blue beads roughly hacked from their tips. Her eyes are puffy and red.

It sort of feels like he’s seeing her more naked than she’s ever been, and it’s not at all comfortable.

 

****

 

Erend’s down to ember. There’s a dose of hintergold at his belt that he is very determined not to take. He’s not sure he could walk all the way to Meridian from here, but he’s very sure that he’s willing to _try._

He’s got his arm firmly wrapped to his chest, and the only position that’s comfortable is on his back. When she’s awake, Aloy keeps a bare distance between them, not quite letting herself touch him. It feels like that first few weeks they’d shared a bed, and neither of them were comfortable enough to actually cross that distance.

He reaches over with with his good hand and threads her fingers through his own. “Listen to me,” he says quietly. “This is okay. I’m okay. We’re both alive, and that’s all I care about.”

She’s building herself into a thick fortress again. He can see it happening, each stone lifted up and firmly slotted into place. He’s worked so _hard_ to tease her apart, and there’s a slow bubble of panic forming under his lungs.

He doesn’t know what to do.

What he _wants_ is to go back to the Embrace and personally dismember every single Nora. He wants to wipe the entire fucking tribe from the world. He wants to finish what the Eclipse started, and he won’t need machines to help him. He will reduce the entire Embrace to ash with the force of his anger alone.

He wants to take their treacherous bones and turn them to charcoal. He wants to forge a new life for Aloy, a new identity from the ashes of her past.

She curls up to hesitantly put her head on his stomach. He sinks his fingers into her hair, running them down to the awful, ragged tips. “I love you,” he says quietly.

She doesn’t say anything back.

They lie there a long time, not quite asleep but not fully awake. The shadows stretch up and across the walls, and then swallow the light completely. Her head is heavy on his stomach, the weight familiar and comfortable. She’s right here, but she isn’t _here_ , and he doesn’t have any idea how to bring her back.

Eventually, the ache in his shoulder turns into something sharper and throbbing, and he caves and takes the hintergold. He hates himself for it, but as the potion slides into his veins, he can’t quite regret it. He lies back and lets the tension bleed from his limbs.

Her hair is so _soft_. It’s so rarely out of its braids, and there’s nothing to block his fingers from their slow, sliding path. It’s not _right_ \- it’s not _her_ \- but he can’t make himself stop.

He feels her breathing change, and _oh_ , there she is, like a flash of lightning in his gut. He wants the parts of her alive and burning, because she’s a guttering candle and he’s terrified that she’s blowing away to dust.

He’s floating like one of the weather kites above Meridian, bobbing on the hintergold breeze, and it’s _Aloy_ , warm and soft and slick. The ache of his shoulder is nothing compared to the heat of her, and he lets his consciousness dissolve into his fingers, loose and untethered.

She’s on the ragged edge, but at the very end, it just...doesn’t happen. She crumbles like soft stone, sloughing off into hollow nothing.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m-”

He palms the back of her head. He’s caught in the hintergold, and the whole purpose of his body is to be wrapped around hers. There’s nothing that matters for himself.

He wants her. He wants every part of her. He wants her wild and fierce, her hair in the wind like the banner of a righteous army. He wants her tangled in his bed, her voice soft and fond in a way only he gets to hear.

More than anything, he wants her back to herself. He wants her to trust the ground she stands on and the allies she keeps at her side. He can’t make her choices for her - that’s the agreement they’ve grudgingly honored - but regardless of what she says, he’s here to take her hits. He will be the last stand, the salient between her and betrayal.

He’s _supposed_ to be the salient, but he’s failed. He tried to protect her, but it wasn’t enough. He keeps going back and back to everything that happened in the Embrace, and he can’t _see_ what else he could have done. If he hadn’t gone inside Eleuthia, he’d still have managed to piss the Nora off some other way, and he wouldn’t have seen the terrifying beauty of her origin. He could have chosen completely different fighting tactics with the Ravagers, but even if he hadn’t taken the hits he had, even if the machines hadn’t actually _attacked_ , the Nora would have still taken it as part of Aloy’s curse.

It chills him to think that the way things happened was the _best_ -case scenario. Without Teb, they’d have been blindsided, and they’d be dead. Without Varl and Sona, they wouldn’t have gotten to the gate, and they’d be dead. If Teb had been just a little more afraid, if Varl had been a little more stubborn...

They’d be dead so many different ways, and he can’t let himself think about it too much or he’ll throw up.

 

****

 

The next day dawns clear and cold. They aren’t anywhere near where they should be, but Erend is itching to be on the road. He needs the dry bluster of the Meridian winter, the pleasant, self-centered oblivion of the market streets. He needs to be back among his men, to fortify himself and set his world as back into order as he can make it.  

Aloy doesn’t say anything, but the clotted air around her has eased a bit. There’s a tired clarity in her eyes, a weary fatigue in the proud line of her shoulders. She’s not herself, but she’s more present than she’s been in days.

They pack their things, pausing only to give Balahn a final debrief.

“I don’t know if there are any more machines left from the invasion,” Aloy says, “but it’s not impossible.”

“We’ll keep an eye out,” Balahn says soberly. “Safe journey, my friends.”

The Gatelands are dusted with snow. It’s fine powder, hard and dry like the sand it covers. When they stop to camp for the night, it’s bitterly cold despite the fire, and Aloy comes to sit between Erend’s knees. Her hair’s gone to knots in the wind, and he gently combs his fingers through the tangle.

“You alright?” he finally asks, a pointless question that he’s still compelled to form.

Her eyes are a thousand miles away, and she leans back against his chest, her body gone boneless with a grief he knows all too well. “I just want to be home.”

He doesn’t have an answer to that. He doesn’t need to tell her that home is never the same. He’d wanted to go home after Ersa died, but without her, there wasn’t any home to go to, until Aloy.

 _Marry me. Marry me and I’ll make myself into the only home you’ll ever need. As long as I’m breathing, you’ll never feel unwanted or alone. You’re light and life and heat, and you’re the only thing I’m ever going to want. You’re the most precious place in the entire world, and I will do whatever it takes - I will do_ anything _\- to make you feel safe and loved._

They sit in the flickering cold for a long time, his chin on the top of her head and his arms wrapped comfortably around her. There are words in his head and words in his throat, but her hair is in his mouth, and he can’t make himself speak.


	55. Chapter 55

Erend _knows_ Aloy is concerned about the effect overriding a machine might have on the network, but when they stumble on a Charger herd, she doesn’t even hesitate. She leads their mounts back to where he’s waiting and wordlessly climbs on.

He’s tired enough and beaten enough that if this gets them to Meridian faster, he’s fully in favor. He hates riding - he _hates_ it - but after the interminable teeth-rattling of the Sawtooth, the Charger’s rolling motion is almost comfortable.

He’s beaten and he’s worried. She’s awake, but every movement is spare and heavy. He doesn’t care what it takes to get them home, because they _need_ to get there. They need backup. They need rest. He needs to put thick stone walls around her and hide with her until the horrible emptiness leaches from her face.

He doesn’t let himself think about the thaw omen. He trusts her but he _doesn’t_ , because she’d looked right at him and poisoned herself. He’s absolutely sure it’s because she thinks him being shot was her fault, and he can’t even argue. He _did_ get shot, and technically, it _was_ because of her, but she’s not the one to blame. If he hadn’t been there, she’d be dead. He'd get shot a thousand times for her, and the worst part is that she knows.

Everything has a consequence, and he’s so fucking tired. Too many consequences are heaped up on top of them right now, and not a single one is deserved. There was a time when he’d been so painfully wrapped inside himself that he’d been sure he’d deserved every bad thing the world threw at him, but right now, he’s just angry. Aloy has done everything that’s been asked of her, and it hasn’t been enough.

It’s not his justice to dispense, but fire and spit, no one else is stepping up. He’s a soldier and a guard, a captain and a leader, and he _loves_ her. If he’s not qualified to defend her, no one is.

 

****

 

They abandon the Chargers just out of sight of the north gate, and slowly make their way into the city. It’s heading toward evening, the sun low and red on the horizon. At the bridge, Garvehl is heading the watch, and all the Vanguard on duty explode into motion as soon as they see Erend’s approach.

He _hates_ the way Aloy recoils when the men swarm, and even though they’re his men - they’re _his_ , every single one trusted and loyal - for her sake, he makes himself into something bigger and scarier than he feels capable of being.

“Cap,” Garvehl breathes. “We got the runner from Daytower, and then the _other_ runner-”

It makes sense. They’d sent one out with the message they were going into the Embrace, and he’s not surprised Balahn sent another when they came back. He's sure the second report wasn't anywhere near glamorous.

Erend needs to debrief them. If he stops moving, he’s going to sleep for a week, and he doesn’t _have_ a week. As soon as Meridian’s towers rose into sight, the weight of Avad’s impending wedding settled back onto his shoulders. He’s been gone almost two months, _weeks_ longer than he’s anticipated.

He’s been running words over and over in his head for days, but he still hasn’t figured out how to take the horror of what happened and distill it into a handful of reasonable sentences. More than that, he doesn’t _want_ to. He wants to pretend it didn’t happen. He wants to take a pumice stone and scrub every trace of it from Aloy’s mind. He’ll remember it for himself, if only to make sure she never, ever goes back to the Embrace again.

“Cap?” Garvehl prompts.

They both look bad. Erend knows that. They’re both exhausted. He can feel every stitch in his shoulder, and even in the ruddy sunset, Aloy is sun-bleached and flat. She’s bundled her hair in a messy knot at the back of her skull, all her brightness and glory drawn down and hidden.

“Get Tandin and Adar,” he says. “If there’s anyone of Marad’s on the way, grab them too. Meet me at our place. I’m about to drop and I only want to say this once.”

It’s not a long walk from the bridge to the apartment - fire and spit, he _knows_ it isn’t - but it feels like it takes a year. He fumbles with the lock, hands shaking, and when the door swings open and the air of home spills out into his lungs, the relief is staggering.

“You want to be here for this?” he asks Aloy as they drop their gear where they stand. She hesitates a moment too long, her eyes going glimmering and red, and he hates the Nora. He _hates_ them. If he doesn’t tell Adar to execute every Nora trader in the entire Sundom, it will be a huge fucking miracle.

He takes a breath and presses his lips to her forehead, nudging her toward the stairs. “I’ll take care of it. I got this.”

When Garvehl arrives with Adar and Tandin, Erend’s waiting. To his shock, they’re accompanied not by one of Marad’s agents, but Marad himself. “It was everything I could do to keep Avad from coming,” the spymaster says. “I assumed you’d prefer as little spectacle as possible.”

“Thanks,” Erend says. “I’ll talk with him, but right now-”

“You need rest,” Marad agrees. “We’ll endeavor to make this short. If you’ll give me the overview, we can discuss the details at a later time.”

Tandin and especially Garvehl look deeply uncomfortable. Adar’s forehead is creased with concern. Erend doesn’t know what he’s going to say. He’s not ready for this. If he says it, it becomes real, and he really, _really-_

Aloy’s upstairs. The stone walls carry sound. He’s not going to make her relive this if he possibly can, but he’s so close to falling over, he _can’t_ take this elsewhere.

“We needed to get information about the machines from a place in Mother’s Heart,” Erend says. “There’s a large faction of the Nora that believe Aloy is a curse sent by the machines.”

Marad’s eyes flick from Erend’s face to the damp bandage on his shoulder. “You were not well-received.” It isn’t a question.

“No,” Erend says. “We weren’t.”

 _We almost didn’t get out. We almost died. They took her and twisted everything she said. They swarmed her like Scrappers and went for her throat. Everything she is and does is a fucking miracle, she’s a_ _gift none of us deserve, and they want to kill her for it._  

He looks at his men. “I don’t know what kind of security risk we’re looking at. The garrison at Daytower said we weren’t followed, but that’s not something I’d stake my life on.”

Garvehl’s eyes go wide. “It’s that bad?”

“I didn’t get an arrow in my shoulder for being good-looking,” Erend snaps. He shouldn’t yell - he _shouldn’t_ , not at Garvehl, not at these good people who are alarmed and desperate to understand what happened - but he’s tired and he’s scared, and most of all he’s very, very angry.

Even now, the fury burns so strongly in his stomach it's all he can do not to puke.

Marad frowns. “What are we looking at, exactly?”

“The faction.” He tries to keep his tone as flat as possible. “I don’t know if they’re the majority, but they’re definitely not small, and they want her dead.”

Tandin’s face goes blank. “Cap, did they...was that-” he gestures to Erend’s shoulder- “for her?”

“I don't know,” Erend says. “I didn't see it. I was just trying to get her out.”

“What do you suggest?” Marad says.

“I’m not suggesting anything. What I’m going to _do_ is make sure this city is safe.” He turns to his men. “Nora traders, outcasts, refugees, whatever: don't do anything stupid, but your eyes are open. Do you understand? This isn't about me and her; this is a very important ally who just survived an assassination attempt. There are things with the machines we can’t even _begin_ to know, and Aloy is the only one who comes anywhere close.”

“We would not have survived the attack on the Spire without her help,” Marad says soberly.

“ _No one_ would have survived,” Erend snaps. “The Nora are hurting. The Embrace is _trashed_ , and all they see is Aloy in the middle of it. They’re scared and they’re blaming her.”

“They’re our allies-” Marad starts.

“Not all of them. We had help getting out, but if we hadn’t, there wouldn’t even be enough of us left to bury.”

He's almost relieved to see the shock and  immediate determination on the Vanguard faces.

“This is a delicate situation,” Marad says. “There’s enough mistrust among tribes from the Red Raids, and rightly so. If we don’t tread carefully, we risk another war.”

“The politics are for you and Avad.” He wants a war. He wants to take every ounce of destruction he can muster and leave the Embrace scorched and dead. Some small kernel is his brain is abjectly grateful for Teb, Varl and Sona, but most of him just remembers their stiff disdain at the Spire. Yeah, he and Aloy would be dead in the mud without them, but they hadn’t done anything to encourage tolerance either. They hadn't started the fire, but they'd damn well stood back and watched it grow. “Will the conflict leave the Embrace? I don’t know. My job is to protect the interests of the Sun King, and right now, that means armoring up.”

Adar’s already with him. Tandin’s glowing with fierce purpose, and Garvehl’s jaw is set, his face ready for blood.

“I understand,” Marad says calmly. “I suggest we speak at length with Avad, but in the interim, I’ve gotten the overview I need.” He gets to his feet. “Do you require any medical attention? Should I ask a healer to stop by?”

Erend’s sure his bandage needs changing. He can feel the grit and sweat of the road clinging to his skin, but more than anything, he wants to lock the door and sit here in the foyer, keeping watch with his axe as Aloy sleeps. “No. Thanks.”

When Marad is gone, Garvehl leaves to return to his post, but Tandin and Adar hang back. “Cap, not a thing happens here without our eyes on it,” Tandin says. “Nothing.”

“Don’t get stupid. You heard Marad. There has to be caution.” It’s the thing a captain should say, and he doesn’t believe a word of it.

“Should we brief the others now, or do you want to do that later?” Adar asks.

Erend still hasn’t decided what he’s going to say. He knows what he’s told Marad, but the Vanguard is an entirely different matter. “They already know I’m back. Tell them to keep their eyes open, and we’ll talk tomorrow.”

They'll do what he asks. Of course they will, and he's never been more grateful.

When he’s alone, Erend drops his head to the table and breathes into the wood. He’s two people right now: the captain of the Vanguard, a leader, someone who needs to make levelheaded, reasonable decisions. He’s also a man who desperately wants to be a husband, someone who can’t quantify how much he loves this crazy, wild woman, and is so furious and terrified and _overwhelmed_ that any logical sense is utterly subsumed beneath sheer animal fear.

He was already exhausted. He’s been so focused on getting back to Meridian that he hasn’t had time to consider what it would be _like_ to be back.

He tells himself that this is good. This is forward movement, something strong and tangible. He hasn’t even had time to face everything that’s happened, and if he can go from running scared to mounting an impenetrable defense, that’s better for everyone.

He makes himself get up. He peels off his travel-stained clothes, and passes a perfunctory washcloth over the most-necessary parts. He peers into the mirror and decides there isn’t enough blood seeping through the bandage to warrant concern, and heaves himself upstairs.

Aloy hasn’t bothered to pull back the sheets or even undress. She’s curled in a tight ball, not asleep but staring at some unknowable point just beyond her nose.

He wraps himself around her against the loud protest of his shoulder, but she feels so stiff and _small_ in his arms. She’s a huge presence, a blinding explosion of light and heat, and right now, there’s _nothing_. He can’t feel _anything_ of her, and he feels a violent urge to shake her, to scream until she comes back from wherever it is she’s gone.  

“I love you,” he whispers into the back of her neck, his throat closing up. “Aloy, I love you so much.”

She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even move.

 

****

 

He doesn’t sleep. Sometime after midnight, her breathing evens out, and he thinks she might have finally drifted off, but he can’t move.

When the sky lightens, he’s in enough pain that he _needs_ to move, so he tucks the blanket tightly around her. “I’m going to the command post,” he says, sinking his hand into her hair.

She makes a small noise of acknowledgement.

It’s not until he starts walking that he understands how completely sore he is. He allows himself a small dose of ember, but nothing stronger. He hurts like hell, and he’s going to have to be _very_ careful not to take his frustration out on his men.

It’s not quite time for the change of watch, but almost everyone’s there anyway, including ones who won’t be on duty until well in the afternoon. “Captain,” says Adar. “Thought you might come in early.”

“What, you throw me a party?” He looks them over. “I really didn’t mean to be gone so long. Sorry, guys.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Tandin says fiercely. “Just tell us what we need to know.”

He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what to _say_. There’s an impossible maelstrom of emotion in his chest, and he’s watching the woman he loves shatter in front of him. He’d tried to stick to bare facts last night, but he so raw he’s almost hungover. He’d had to be calm for Marad, and he should be calm now, but he can’t. He isn’t physically capable.

“Aloy’s tribe tried to kill her,” he makes himself say, the words clogging his throat like molten ore. “Whatever you’ve heard, whatever news came through, it’s worse.”

There’s dead silence, a hard current of anger blazing to life. Even if they weren’t loyal to him, even if they didn’t adore her and hadn’t made a hundred ridiculous bets in favor of Erend’s romantic prospects, they’ve fought next to her. They know her worth on the battlefield and off. If she wasn’t their captain’s lady, she’s still a comrade-in-arms, and that alone would kindle fury.

“I’ve already briefed Marad,” he says. “Today I’m going to brief Avad. If you have any questions, ask me directly. I’ll tell you what you need to know, but I don’t want it to go any further. The politics aren't up to us. We stay down here in the dirt, because we’re the Vanguard. We go to the front because we’re harder than anyone else, and this changes nothing.”

“Changes a lot of things,” Eddic mutters. “Changes who’s top of the list of bungs.”

Erend silences him with a glare. “We have a royal wedding in four months. There’s going to be more people in Meridian than anyone’s ever seen. Most of them, yeah, they’re going to party, but it’s been six years since we put Jiran out on his ass and ended the Red Raids. That’s still fresh in a lot of minds, and now, half the Nora are aiming for Aloy’s head. They’re not inclined to take a walk, but that’s not something I’d bet shards on. What concerns me most is that maybe the Nora won’t leave home, but there are any number of people who _will_. Maybe it’ll be for shards, maybe because they agree, but it doesn’t matter. _They’re_ the ones we watch for.” He takes a breath. “This is all on top of Dervahl’s legacy  _and_ the Shadow Carja  _and_ Eclipse  _and_ bandits, and any number of people who aren’t gonna be here to celebrate. There aren’t nearly enough of us as there should be, but it’s not about our numbers. It’s about how good we are, and we-” He can’t keep the anger from his voice, and it comes out as a low growl- “are _very_ good.”

“But Aloy,” says Garvehl. “Half her tribe..?”

“Imagine Dervahl,” Erend says steadily, “only he’s an ealdorman, and instead of a bunch of deluded followers, he’s got almost every Oseram in the Claim. Imagine that and add in Mainspring burned to the ground, but no one understands _why_.”

“No way,” Kip breathes. “It’s not _like_ that.”

“ _We_ know how it is,” Erend says, “but I stood in the middle of them and watched it happen. They took everything she said and turned it against her. We’ve seen the way she fights. We’ve seen her turn a machine. Even _I_ don’t know how she does it, but I know she’s with us.”

He can’t tell them she was outcast, and he can’t tell them why. Being motherless is the entire foundation of what happened, but it doesn’t feel like his story to tell. Even if it was, he’s sure he can’t do it justice. He only barely understands it himself. Aloy was born to save the world - and she _was_ born, artificial womb or not - and that is entirely the reason the Nora hate her.

He can’t comprehend _why_ they decided she was motherless. They couldn’t have known about GAIA and Eleuthia, so their judgement must have rested entirely on the fact that there wasn’t a woman to claim her. It doesn’t make _sense_ , not when their entire religion is based on an all-encompassing maternal deity. If she’d been found in the forest, or abandoned at the gates, or if she’d come from a woman who immediately died: would they have called her motherless then?

Erend’s mother is dead. He was so young he can’t even remember her face. Would he and Ersa have been cast out, too?  

It’s completely contrary to what he’d expect. The Carja are effusive in their reverence for the sun. The priests have their own liturgy, but even the most conservative and devout will grudgingly admit that the sun shines on everything, and regardless of whether or not a person accepts its light, they’re still made warm. If the Nora revere an All-Mother, they should believe that applies to everyone. If there’s no woman to claim a baby, it's still a child of the All-Mother, and by that logic, _no one_ is motherless.

Furthermore, why is being motherless even a sin?

It doesn’t make _sense_ , and the more he thinks about it, the more it fuels the blazing forge of his anger-

He suddenly goes completely cold. Aloy had said the Matriarchs weren’t elected. They were placed in charge only because they’d had great-grandchildren. He’d been drunk at the Proving, but the blessing ceremony rises sharp and clear in his mind. It had been a ritual honoring mothers, but it had felt...weird. Everything felt weird, and wildly, he thinks the Nora are more obsessed with having the _title_ of mother than actually _acting_ like mothers.

Being motherless _would_ be the worst sin, because it would mean denying someone that ultimate honor. The only thing that might come close would be a child killing its mother by its birth.

It still doesn’t make sense, but now it doesn’t make sense in an entirely different way.

Erend’s men are watching him, waiting. They’re fierce and dedicated, and right now, they’re almost as angry as he is. “She’s with us,” he repeats. “It’s personal for me, but even if it weren’t, she’s bled by our side. That makes her one of us.”

“It _is_ fucking personal,” Kip says darkly. He flexes his metal hand, fingers glinting like knives. “They don’t want her? Fuck them. We’re her tribe now.”

Erend’s throat abruptly closes, his eyes burning.

“Not gonna ask you what you want us to do, Cap,” Tandin says. “Pretty sure we’re level on that. What are you gonna _have_ us do?”

“We do what Avad says,” Erend tells him. “There’s a lot to keep us busy. We keep our eyes open and our ears to the ground. We watch. We stay sharp and we make plans, so we don’t get blindsided. This isn’t something we can hit like we usually do. This is construction.” He looks at them pointedly. “What did Ersa always say?”

Once, he’d asked them that question, and they hadn’t answered. They’d been upset and he hadn’t quite been the leader he’d needed to be. Now, there’s a whole host of strong, confident voices: “Knowledge is the sharpest weapon!”

“That’s it.” He shifts his weight, taking the strain off his bad leg. “Now, go be the best. You’re already good at it.”

There’s a swarm of handshakes, and he tries very hard not to grimace when someone accidentally bumps his arm. He tries just as hard not to cry.

Tandin hangs back. “Cap,” he says. “You got shot. That’s something big. You said the Nora aren’t gonna leave their turf, but we protect our own. That’s you, and that’s her.”

“I don’t have to tell you if you get caught following her, she’ll kick your ass,” Erend says. “Then she’ll kick _my_ ass, and I’ll have to kick everyone’s ass just to save face. So. You know.”

He’s expecting a smile, or a smirk. Any reaction, really, other than the quiet concern he actually gets. “Cap, she okay?” Tandin asks. “I mean, you’re okay too, right?”

It’s a gentle, honest question, and it requires a gentle, honest answer. “Would you be?”

Tandin shakes his head. “We got your back, Cap,” he finally says. “You know that. It can’t look personal, and I know why, but that doesn’t mean we don’t take it that way.”

“I know.” The words almost don't come out. Erend wants to say _you don't have any idea how good it is to be home_ , but it's not something a captain should say to someone under his command. Instead, he pinches at burning eyes. “I'm beat,” he says instead. “I've got half the blood in my body that I need, so I'm gonna go sleep before I fall on face and you need to haul my ass around again.”

“For what it's worth,” Tandin offers, “you don't look _nearly_ as bad.”

“I'll keep that in mind.” He claps Tandin’s shoulder. “Come get me if you need.”

“Been on our own for almost two months,” his third points out, and _there's_ the smirk Erend’s aiming for. “Won't even notice.”


	56. Chapter 56

It’s too easy to slip into the old routine. Erend gets food and brings it home, but instead of sitting on the floor, intent and engrossed in her Focus, Aloy hasn’t even moved. The apartment is painfully still, the air heavy with silence.

“Hey,” he says quietly, easing onto the bed beside her. “Got you something to eat.”

Her voice is flat, muffled by the pillow. “Not hungry.”

He thinks of thaw omen, of the agonzing hours and hours holding her up. “It’s reed soup,” he says, and then, because it’s a hard truth, “...my favorite hangover cure.”

Aloy cracks one eye, and he _almost_ sees a distant shadow of belligerence.

They eat. He’s starving, caught in the ravenous demand of healing flesh, and the bowl is empty as soon as he’s taken the first bite. She pokes at hers, corn kernels bobbing away from the spoon.

“You want to talk?” he makes himself ask.

“No.”

He knows. Ersa’s death absolutely destroyed him. There hadn’t been words for his grief, and even if there had been, he wouldn’t have been able to speak.

Aloy survived the Proving and then had to run. She’d lost Rost and had to keep moving. Every time the world has taken something from her, there’s something else urgent and unavoidable, and she’s never been able to just sit with that until after the Spire.

This isn’t the same. She was born an outcast and she hated every moment of it. When the tribe finally deigned to accept her, she’d had to leave them, to go out into the world on her own and attempt an unimaginably difficult task. She’d had to do it alone, and she’d had to do it knowing that her failure meant utter annihilation.

He’s seen her push against her isolation. She’s traveled the length and breadth of the Sundom, gone to places he can’t even imagine, but given the choice, she wears Nora leather and fur. After the Spire, she’d hidden from her tribe, but he thinks she’d assumed that if she waited long enough, if she badgered them, if she explained it better, the Anointed nonsense would eventually blow over. They’d welcome her in with open arms, and they’d see her for the person she is. There’d be no choking cloud of reverence, no stinging public shame.

She’s lived under the assumption that if she did the right thing, if she was somehow _good enough_ , in whatever category or whatever way, the tribe would accept her. She believed that right up until someone put an arrow in his shoulder.

It doesn’t work that way. Erend is the son of an angry, unpredictable man. He’s spent more years than he cares to admit thinking that if he was just good enough, the violence would end.

Good enough doesn’t exist.

This is what he’d wanted her not to learn. This is the ugly truth he’s been desperate to hide from her, but instead, he's been the thing that blew the shadows open wide.

 

****

 

He’d told Tandin he was going home to sleep, but what Erend needs to do is report to Avad. He’d given Marad the barest details, and he’s told the Vanguard probably more than he should, but Avad is the one who matters the most.

He really, really wants to sleep.

He makes himself take a bath, and watches the grease and dirt float to the surface. Hope is a raw, dangerous thing, he thinks, buoyant and live-giving like water until the moment you start to drown.

Erend has to do his damndest to make sure Aloy learns to swim.

When he’s clean, he leans toward the mirror, awkwardly picking at his bandage. He must look especially pathetic, because Aloy comes up and wordlessly untangles the damp knot of fabric.

“Looks better,” he offers, because it _does_.

Her fingers are colder than the poultice against his skin.

“Going to the palace,” Erend says. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

She shakes her head. “Coming with you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“ _Don’t_ tell me what to do,” she snarls, the harsh blast of lit blaze, and it’s so unexpected and _scary_ that he actually stumbles back a step.

This isn't her. It's fragments of her, bound together with blood and despair into a shape that doesn't even approach who she really is. This is coal dust in the air, volatile and unseen. This is the wait at the Spire, the world holding its breath and teetering on the edge of a battle too vast and terrible to comprehend.

They go to the palace, and he watches her as they walk. Every step is the strike of a hammer on an anvil, each blow pounding away any residual glow. By the time they get to the bridge, she's made herself bare steel, cold and blank.

 _Don't,_ he wants to scream. _Don't you dare. You didn't let me die, you've never let me die, so you can't die here in front of me._

She's a fading candle, and he will burn himself to ash if it means keeping her alight.

They’re walking across the long bridge, colorful banners fluttering in the breeze, when he finally broaches the subject. “I think we should tell Avad about HEPHAESTUS.”

“Go ahead.” Aloy shakes her head. “No one’s going to believe us anyway.”

“He was here for HADES,” Erend points out, swallowing back a spike of anger. “He didn’t question, and he gave you everything he could.”

“The Nora didn’t question when I told them to come,” she retorts. “Look how _that_ turned out.”

“It won’t be the same,” Erend says firmly. “And even if it is, we leave together.”

She doesn't even bother to answer.

He can’t say there isn’t a risk, or that by telling more people, he and Aloy increase the chance HEPHAESTUS might somehow discover their plans. Still, this is something that affects the Sundom, and that means Avad needs to know. “You said yourself the escalation has been concentrated around trade routes,” he points out. “The Sundom has the busiest trade routes in the region.”

She barely shrugs. “Fine. Do it. He won’t understand, and he’ll just hit on me.”

“I still can’t believe he did that.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, because Not-Aloy flashes up, coiled and furious. “I’ll just add it to the list of everything _else_ nobody believes.”

Fuck. “I _meant_ I expected better from him.”

“Of course you did.” She turns and stalks ahead.

He’s not sure if she means of course that’s what he meant, or of course he’d expected better.

This isn’t her. This isn’t _her_ , but he makes himself take a deep breath. She’d stuck with him when he’d been a cesspool of alcohol and self-loathing, and no matter how hard this is, he wants to return the favor. He has to believe she’ll sort herself out - if _he_ did, than anything is possible - and he _knows_ any push will mean losing her.

Ersa had pushed him. She’d lectured and threatened and growled, and he’d made a game out of deflecting her with an idiot grin. Aloy had just frowned. She’d sliced through the bluster as if it wasn’t even there, and stared expectantly until he got his shit together.

He owes her. He owes her _so much_. There’s a small, hopeful ember that insists he’d have gotten there on his own, but Erend knows himself. He knows where he’d been, and he knows where he’s come from. He knows the burn of his father’s blood in his veins, and even right now, right at this _second_ , there’s a not-insignificant part of him that would gladly accept an offered drink.

If he didn’t have Aloy, he would be nothing. She’s life and light and heat, the lodestone he didn’t know he needed, the hearth and the _future_ he didn’t think existed and even now almost doesn’t believe he can actually have.

 _Let me be here_ , he thinks at the unbearable tension in her shoulders. _Use me. Lean on me. Let me cover you and protect you. I want to be whatever you need me to be and I want to do whatever you need me to do, because you’re all I’m ever going to want._

 _Marry me. Marry me. Marry me_.

He can’t say that. He can’t say any of it. He can just try to do exactly what she’d done, and offer himself without pressure or expectation, even though his heart is nothing but jagged shards in his throat.

 

****

 

Most of the damage has been repaired in the city and the village and farmland below, and Avad has finally allowed workers to start repairs on the palace. The walls are crawling with stonemasons, scaffolding wrapping around the towers like vines.

For once, the stairways and halls aren’t crawling with obsequious, snivelling nobles, and Erend is almost pathetically grateful. The workers are so engrossed in their tasks that they don’t notice another Oseram Vanguard passing through, and if they recognize Aloy, she radiates such a prickly severity that no one dares approach.

There’s four months until the royal wedding, and even if Avad isn’t keen on ostentatious display, his seneschal _is_ , and the king would have an easier time convincing the sun not to rise.

The stairs up to Avad’s personal rooms are no exception to the repair, and Erend ducks under a scaffold. There’s a huge clay planter balanced precariously, two workers arguing about its placement as their fellows patch the brick supports beneath with thick daubs of mortar. The Carja might be good at building, he thinks to himself, but some of them are better than others.

Not half a breath later, there’s an excited shout and Erend has to quickly twist to protect his shoulder from the full impact of eight-year-old exuberance. “Whoa, kid, _easy_.”

“You got hurt!” Itamen skids to a halt. “Are you okay?”

“Battle wound,” Erend says casually. “You should see the other guy. Hey, is your brother around?”

“Here.” Avad rises from a chair, coming to clasp Erend’s good arm. “My friends. You can’t imagine my relief to see you well.”

“...varying degrees of well, maybe.” Erend flicks his eyes significantly toward Itamen, and Avad nods soberly.

“This not a conversation for you to participate in,” the Sun King tells his little brother. “Will you leave us for a moment?”

Itamen scowls, and shuffles a little closer to Erend.

“I’ll come see you when we’re done,” Erend offers, because Itamen’s welcome and then that _pout_ hit him right in the kidneys. Things he can't think about - not ever, and especially not _now_ \- well up in his mind like stunned tears.

When the kid’s out of earshot, Avad gestures to a low couch, and Erend drops down without hesitation. Aloy perches on the edge like a hare about to bolt, her face inscrutable.

“Your presence has been sorely missed,” Avad says, leaning forward. “I have no doubt there’s much to share. Perhaps at the beginning?”

Erend relays the state of the various garrisons. “Loose,” he concludes, “but nothing a more regular rotation wouldn't cure. Balahn’s got a steady hand on Daytower, though.”

“I expect nothing less,” Avad says, and there's that word. Erend risks a glance at Aloy, but she's as stiff and indifferent as a statue

Finally, there's no way to avoid it. “The Embrace,” Avad says. “Marad said you did not fare well.”

“There are machines left by the Eclipse,” Aloy says. There's nothing on her face, nothing in her voice. “We fought two Ravagers. There was evidence they were previously Corrupted.”

There's a beat where conjecture should naturally follow, but when none is forthcoming, Erend jumps in. “The theory is that whatever force purged the Spire also purged these guys. They weren't friendly, but it could have been much worse.”

“How do you know they were Eclipse?” Avad asks.

Aloy’s eyes flash. “They aren't from the Embrace.”

Avad frowns. “But could they-”

“This isn't helpful,” she snaps, getting to her feet. She looks at Erend. “I've shared what's relevant. I'm leaving.”

“Aloy-” Erend heaves himself up to follow her, but she's already gone.

He wants to puke. This isn't how it should be, not at _all_. Avad should have been his brother-in-law, but he’s the _king_ , and even as casual as he’s let them all be, there's a certain propriety that needs to be maintained.

Now, the Avad looking at him with bewildered concern is absolutely the man who should have been his brother-in-law, and Erend has no idea what to say.

He wants to make an excuse. He wants to run after her. He wants to kill the Nora and bleach every inch of the Embrace. He wants to resurrect the Eclipse and send them back amid the tall conifers and snowy cliffs.

He wants to throw himself to the ground and sob until the muscles around his lungs are flaccid and dead.

“We just got back,” he offers. “It’s...we needed to be home.”

“I don’t even know what I can ask,” Avad says.

Avad doesn’t know what to ask, and Erend doesn’t know how to answer, so he just-

He starts explaining. It’s not his story to tell, and Aloy should be here for this, but she isn’t and he’s doing it anyway. It’s awkward and disjointed. The end of the metal world and the existence of this one is a tangled skein, and Aloy is at the center.

He starts with Eclipse’s obsession with Aloy, and her search for her mother. He describes Aloy’s spear, and her impossible skill with machines. He does what he hadn’t done two years ago, and tells Avad about the conversation in Brightmarket. He pushes himself into the back of his mind and describes what he can about the battle for the Spire.

Avad pauses him only to have food brought, and to ensure that their privacy is maintained.

Erend recounts going into the facility below Sunfall, and what the flickering ghosts told him about Zero Dawn. He takes a breath and tells Avad about Elisabet Sobek, the ancient woman wearing Aloy’s face. He talks about GAIA and HADES, about her last-ditch attempt to save the world, and how Aloy came to be. He explains the Derangement, and their quest for HEPHAESTUS.

There’s the Nora. Of all the things that aren’t his to tell, they are the pinnacle, but he has to try, and he only hits the bare details. He also tries not to demand their execution.

When it’s done, the sun has sunk toward the horizon. Erend is exhausted. His throat is raw, his voice gone numb, and there isn’t enough room between his lungs for the thick chaos in his chest. He isn’t good with words, and these are more words than he’s ever spoken at once. He’s absolutely sure that even if he hasn’t made a slag heap of the whole thing, he’s missing huge, important chunks.

Avad is silent for a long time, and then he takes off his crown and runs his fingers through his hair. “Had I not seen the influence of the metal devil - of HADES - with my own eyes, I’d believe none of this,” he finally says. He regards Erend with a steady gaze. “What of these things are not meant to be shared beyond the two of us?”

“All of it,” Erend says immediately, and then adds, “I’m not breaking a promise, but I’m not doing myself any favors, either.”

“My first duty must be as king,” Avad says. “I would ask that you and I meet with Marad as soon as possible to discuss potential security risks. I want to hear more about HEPHAESTUS in particular, but my most pressing concern is any threat from the Nora.”

"I talked with my men this morning," Erend assures him. "I told them to not be idiots, but they’ve got their eyes open.”

“Your sister’s faith in you was not misplaced,” Avad says. “Nor is mine.”

It’s so far from the moment where Avad told him to get his head together. Erend doesn’t even feel like the same man. He’s older, and right at this moment, he’s raw and angry and so very, very tired.

“I must ask about Aloy,” Avad says quietly. “Were there none of the Nora to stand with her?”

“War-Chief Sona,” Erend says. “She and her son Varl got us to the gate. We’d be dead if they hadn’t. Another man, Teb, warned me how things might go down.” He scrubs his face with his good hand, forcing his voice to stay even. “I’ve gone over and over it in my head, but there’s nothing. I couldn’t have done a single damn thing any different.”

“You’re alive,” Avad says. “I would not consider any other outcome.”

Alive. Erend almost snorts. Aloy is so far from alive, and he feels like he’s been slapped on an anvil and hammered until he’s a wet mass of ichor and pulverized bone.

“Whatever you need, you should ask,” Avad says. “You will have it.”

He needs Aloy. He needs her light and heat, the warmth of her eager body against his own. He needs to lie next to her and watch her copper-green eyes as they pick secrets from the hidden places of the world. He needs to tease apart her sharp sweetness until the slow movement of his tongue overwhelms anything else that’s on her mind.

He needs to help her. He needs to assure her she’s safe and loved and _wanted_.  

“I’m sure we’ll think of something,” Erend says instead. “We’ll let you know.”


	57. Chapter 57

It’s nowhere close to late, but he’s so tired he could just fall down right here and sleep for days on the cold stone.

But...he made a promise, so he winds his way downstairs and goes to find Itamen. The boy is sitting amid a pile of cushions on one of the lower balconies, a book propped up on his chest and a bowl containing the remains of several thoroughly decimated melon slices by his side. He immediately perks up at Erend’s arrival. “You remembered!”

“Told you I’d come,” Erend says. “And now that the boring adult stuff is out of the way, here I am.”

Royal courtesy kicks in, incongruous and precocious. “You may sit.”

He chuckles. “Thanks.” He runs a risk being so informal, but the way Erend sees it, the kid’s been through enough. Erend’s pretty sure that no one treats Itamen the way he deserves. Nasadi is old nobility; her house is one of the very few as prestigious as Avad’s, the sort of family that hands their children off to wet nurses and nannies the second they exit the womb. Avad does his best to be a good brother, but he’s got the entire Sundom looking to him for guidance. There are plenty of other children at the palace - offspring of courtiers, servants, ambassadors - but as the former Sun King in Shadow, few people are willing to approach Itamen like the eight-year-old boy he is.

Erend was eight once. He’d have given _anything_ for a sympathetic adult, so - here he is.

He settles himself back into the pillows and sternly tells himself not to fall asleep. “What’s the book?”

Itamen lifts it up to display the cover, wine-dark leather with thick green stitching. “It’s an old scholar who went and talked to a bunch of people in the market and wrote it down.”

“Anything good?”

The boy considers. “Inquiring Jontemah said the one about the goose in the box was funny, but _I_ don’t think so.”

“Scholars,” Erend agrees. “Shows what they know.”

They talk, Itamen chatting eagerly, and Erend nodding along. No one is trying to kill him. His shoulder hurts like hell, but he doesn’t need to move. If he just focuses on the plush cushions beneath him and the brightness of Itamen’s voice, it almost feels like there’s nothing wrong with the world.

He wants this. _Oh_ , he wants. This moment is only borrowed - rare, limited, cherished - and he wants a slice of it for himself _so badly_. The days of living for his next drink - the reckless revelry and inevitable plunging fall - feel decades away. It feels like those ragged memories belong to someone he used to know, someone who couldn’t have possibly been him.

He can’t let himself think like that. He can’t pretend he didn’t live that life. There’s a huge danger in pretending that fall isn’t still half a breath away, and now he has way too much to lose.

His heart clenches hard in his chest, and he wonders where Aloy is.

He feels like he’s on the brink of losing everything he can’t let himself want, and the only thing he can do is _wait_.

 

****

 

Later, they’ll tell him the full sequence of events, but in the moment, he doesn’t even think. There’s a sharp, brittle crack, and even before the stone shakes beneath them, he’s grabbing Itamen and launching away. There’s nowhere to go, so he just shoves the kid against the wall and wraps himself around him. Itamen’s screaming and screaming, there’s the hot stench of blood in Erend’s nose _rockets around them stone shattering around them he’s curled around Aloy-_

He doesn’t realize it’s over until they’re pulling him away. Nasadi sweeps Itamen up in her arms, the boy sobbing against her shoulder. Erend’s shaking, his limbs numb and unresponsive. There’s a blank roar in his ears, and a dark stain of blood on the back of Itamen’s shirt, Nasadi frantically checking him over.

_Fuck-_

One of the Carja guards peers into Erend’s eyes. “Captain. Are you okay, sir?”

He isn’t. He’s back on the Spire, only it’s not Aloy, it’s Itamen. It’s the future he can’t let himself think about, terrified and red-haired-

He can't _breathe_ -

It’s fine. Everything is fine. On the balcony above, a worker hit a patch of rotten mortar and accidentally cleaved off half the balustrade, sending it tumbling into the river below. It’s one of the oldest parts of the palace, weather-beaten and decayed; it’s nothing anyone could have foreseen and nothing that could have been prevented.

If Erend hadn’t moved as quickly as he had, both he and Itamen would have been crushed.

He hurts so badly he can’t even talk, his lungs ballooned with pain. The falling stones missed them, but the tender scab on his shoulder is torn to shreds, blood pouring down his arm. Two of the patrolling Vanguard come running up, and then Beggerd’s got his hands hard on Erend’s shoulder.

Maybe there was a time when he’d been a hero. Maybe he’d have done the same thing and walked away. He’d have felt like hot shit, and he’d have strutted around with glory in his chest for weeks. He’s saved the Sun King’s heir.

Instead, he's grasping at Beggerd’s arm with his good hand, knuckles gray and cold. Erend isn't the captain. He isn't anything. He's just a soldier laid out flat by battle shock, a man whose desperate hope for a family has broken him for valor.

Itamen can’t see this. He’s a kid, he’s a _kid_ -

Mercifully, Nasadi has Itamen’s face pressed to her chest, and her Carja guards sweep them both away.

Erend feels some small, distant part of himself relax.

It’s Tandin’s patrol, of all things, and he’s helping press a fresh bandage into the blood. “You don’t ever do things by half, do you, Cap,” he mutters tersely. “You bleed out right here, Aloy’s gonna kill us both.”

He just wants to be home. He needs to be home. He shoves himself to his feet, and goes back to his knees. He needs Aloy, but right now, _she_ needs _him_ , and he can’t go to pieces on her. Not the way he usually does. He needs to stand on his own for this. He needs-

He needs to throw up, but it hurts too much to even try.

“Itamen,” he croaks instead, because there’d been blood on the kid’s shirt-

“He’s fine,” the other Vanguardsman says, and when Erend turns his head, it’s Ullar, tall and nervous. “Scared as hell, but doesn’t seem hurt.”

“Good job bleeding all over him, though,” Tandin says. “What happened to keeping more of you inside yourself?”

“...got distracted.”

“It’s like you’re not even _trying_.”

He’s drenched, but it’s not as bad as it looks. He sinks down into himself and lets them drag him to a healer. There’s a dose of hintergold he doesn’t even try to refuse, and strong, numbing freeze rime. There are stitches, but fewer than he’d had the first time, and he thinks he should probably count that as a victory.

Mostly, he’s just rattled half out of his mind. He knows how to take a hit, and he’s _good_ at that. He’s working on being careful, but this is his job and he’s not going to stand back. He’ll die for Aloy and he’ll die for Avad. He doesn’t have any reservations about that.

The terrifying part is how fast it had been. In the Embrace, he’d seen the build-up. He’d heard the rumble before the avalanche. He’d known it was coming and he’d done his best to brace himself. This - this was nothing. This was a moment of perfect calm, a _daydream_ , and if he’d been a breath slower, they both would have ended up as pulped Snapmaw fodder.

He’d been thinking about _peace_ , indulging the small, glowing ember that he shouldn’t even consider, and the world has abruptly, unequivocally reminded him why.

“Let’s get you home,” Tandin says.

Erend is the captain. He’s leaned on Tandin more than he wants to, but here he is, accepting the support without argument.

He’s almost home when he sees a flash of red hurtling through the crowd. She pulls up short, her face a twisted storm that he can’t quite read.

“Hey,” he says, and then, because his whole body is loose with hintergold: “Thing at the palace.”

Aloy stares.

“Turned out fine,” he adds.

He’s sore and bleeding. There’s nothing in her eyes but an echo of sorrow. There’s nothing else _in_ her, and he _wants_ there to be. He feels like maybe he’s just not looking hard enough, that it’s his fault he’s missing the vital, blazing element amid the copper-green, but burned out is burned out, and she’s gone blank and dark.

There’s an extended moment of eye contact, and when he can’t bear the weight any longer, he turns and staggers through the front door.

They haven’t even been home a full day.

 

****

 

He doesn’t know if he sleeps or if he just passes out. As soon as he’s amid the blankets, the weight of everything he’s been carrying becomes an impossible, crushing force, and what little composure he has left crumbles away. He drops his good arm across his face and lets his sleeve absorb the pain flooding from his eyes.

Aloy is the closest thing he has to family. Avad might be second, but the chasm of duty between them dwarfs any real connection.

Erend tells himself fiercely that whatever he has, it’s good enough.

 _Marry me. Marry me_.

He wants her. He wants every part of her. He wants something like Itamen, and he can’t pretend he doesn’t. He keeps telling himself it’s not for him to want - and it _isn’t_ , not with his father’s poison blood running through his veins, the inevitable disappointment he can’t avoid - but he can’t stop the wanting any more than he can stop the empty howl for drink that still exists as a dark undercurrent to every breath.

If he were anyone else, he could consider it, but he isn’t, so he _can’t_. He’s already too much a liability for her. He can follow her and protect her, but he can’t ask to claim her, not when the entire world is clamoring to claim her for themselves.

There’s risk in loving. There’s so much _risk_ for both of them, and right now, he’s so raw and wrung out that none of it seems worth it. Anything he wants will be used against him, one way or another. It won’t even have to be deliberate. He almost lost her at the Spire and almost lost his mind in the process. They’re too firmly entwined now. He might have been able to escape once, but he can’t, and he doesn’t want to.

The Nora unwittingly used him against Aloy, and Erend doesn’t know what’s hurt her most: losing her tribe or almost losing him.

He doesn’t want to ask.

_Marry me. Make me your shield. I’ll stand between you and any threat. You’re the last person in the entire world who needs a protector, but let me stand with you, and there won’t be a single thing you can’t accomplish._

Olin suddenly springs into his mind, his desperation to save his family and the resignation on his face. _What am I going to tell my son?_

Erend’s subconscious has always known what his heart doesn’t want to accept. He and Aloy are already bound in a way that’s too tight, too vulnerable. There’s a hole in his shoulder and a blankness in her eyes, and if he hadn’t pursued her, if he didn’t love her, maybe this would be something she’d be able to weather. Maybe she’d be more bonded to her tribe if he hadn’t pulled her away. If he hadn’t offered an alternative, maybe-

She doesn't belong with them. She doesn't belong to anyone but herself, and they wouldn't have let her have that.

He’s not sure _he's_ letting her have that. He's told himself he’s letting her have a choice, but maybe he’s just the best in a long list of bad options, and she has nothing else to grasp.

He doesn’t want to think that maybe he’s _convinced_ her that she has nothing else to grasp.

In the end, Erend knows how to fight the roar of want. He knows how to close himself off and breathe through it when he can, and how to clench like a fist against it when he can. He _knows_ he can’t drink, and he’s known that all along.

He wants the future that’s kindled in his mind, the fire and the hearth and things he _can’t_ let himself name, because naming them makes them real. He wants to stand with Aloy and build that world around her, but he doesn’t know if _she_ wants those things.

She doesn’t belong to him. He’s using her again, the same way he’d used her before. She’d been a wraith in his head, a perfect flame that never flickered. The real Aloy is blazing storm that rages far beyond anything he’s ever known. The imagined hearth will be exactly the same: in his head, it’s warm and strong, a place of peace and contentment, but even if they somehow build it together - if they could ever even _get_ that far, despite HEPHAESTUS and Zero Dawn and the thick collection of clotted scars between them - it won’t be what he’s pictured. It can’t be.

He loves her. He loves her with a wild force that he couldn’t have imagined, and still can’t quite believe. It terrifies him how much he loves her, and he’s even more terrified of what he can _do_ with that love. He’d spent years in the bottom of a bottle because he was afraid to feel anything, and now he’s afraid he can't _stop_.

He’s his father’s son in everything he does. He can’t outrun it, but he can keep watch. He can pinch back the insidious tendrils and make sure they don’t choke what precious little green he’s managed to cultivate.

He knows muscle, and he knows the point where muscle fails. This is his life. It’s _good_. He’s reaching for more than he can have, and if he doesn’t pull himself back, he’s going to fall and take everything else with him. He has to do what he did before and shore up his own fortress so that maybe- _maybe_ -

This is his life. He’s the captain of the Vanguard and protector of the king. He has the love of a wild-haired woman, and that’s enough.

It _is_.

He’s letting Aloy carry her own grief the way he let Ersa carry hers, when instead he should step up beside her and help carry that burden. He has to settle it around shoulders like a heavy pack, and more than that, he _wants_ to. This is what he’s meant to do, and now he just needs to _do_ it.

When Aloy finally comes to bed, she’s small and silent. His shoulder hurts like hell, but he makes himself move, palming the side of her head with his good hand. “I love you,” he says quietly.

She tucks herself against his chest, her knees drawn up against his hip, and when he feels the slow leak of tears under his hand, Erend presses his lips into her hair, and doesn’t say anything at all.


	58. Chapter 58

 Days blur. He heals. He walks his patrols. He meets with his men. He catalogues potential and known threats and develops strategies to mitigate them. He talks with Avad. He carves out precious slivers of time to spend with Itamen.

He can't claim something that isn't his. There's a line of duty he can't cross, and he steels himself to keep his gaze where it belongs.

Aloy comes and goes like the dry fog that hangs along the canyons. She spends time engrossed in her Focus. She disappears, but she always comes back at night. They sleep like they did those first few weeks, barely touching in the darkness. He thinks he should be dreaming, but he doesn’t; instead, there’s just a blank expanse that mirrors his waking life.

More than once, Aloy yells herself awake, and curls against his back. He feels her shaking as she cries, but if he reaches over, she stiffly gets out of bed and doesn’t come back.

Erend learns to pretend he doesn’t hear. The most he can do is shift a little, offering a warm comfort that could easily be a small movement in his sleep.

The monsoons are weeks away. Meridian is dry and bare, and Erend feels exactly the same.

 

****

 

At some point, there’s a moment between breaths, and he sits in the shadow of the command post, rubbing oil into his gambeson. It takes a good year for armor to get properly broken in, and he’s hoping to speed the process a bit. There’s only one arrowhead that’s gotten to the leather, and that’s the one that went right through.

He doesn’t intend to let that happen again.

His men come and go. He can hear the steady thud of feet in the practice ring’s dry sand, but he doesn’t pay any attention to the voices until one in particular jumps to the forefront.

“Captain gets up and leaves his post for two months ‘cause he’s getting it with a _Nora_?” one of the new recruits says with mild disdain. “Being out of Mainspring doesn’t mean we’ve got to slum it.”

There’s a hard pause, and Erend is half a breath from launching himself at the recruit, his blood roaring in his ears - forget being in the Vanguard, that kid is _dead_ \- when half a dozen appalled voices beat him to it.

“Haskel, what the hell-”

“Shut the _fuck_ up, Haskel-”

“That’s _Aloy_ -”

There’s a soft thump of a hand hitting cloth, and then it’s _Kip_ , his voice is harder than anything Erend’s ever heard. “First off,” the Vanguardsman snarls, “that _Nora_ is the reason any of us are even alive. The machines? Half the city dead? Red doomsday light in the sky? She _stopped_ it. You owe her. We _all_ owe her.”

The recruit makes some small noise, but Kip cuts him short. “Shut up. We’re the personal Vanguard of Sun King Avad. You got it right, we _are_ out of Mainspring, and thank the _forge_ for that. You want to answer to some ealdorman who didn’t get off his ass when our people got grabbed? Then go back. You want to stay here and pay back the people who stopped the Raids and the light in the sky? Your mouth better remember.”

“Still not right,” the recruit mumbles.

“The fuck you know about right? Only thing you got to know is she's one of us, and your next word against her gonna be the last word you ever say,” Kip says fiercely. “Hammer to steel I will rip your tongue from your face, and I won’t need this fancy metal hand.”

The recruit mumbles something uncomplimentary, and Kip snarls, “That’s _it_.”

Erend shoves himself to his feet and, shaking, makes himself walk away.

Later that evening, he wanders back into the command post, his chest still raw and tight with anger, but the recruit is gone.

“New guy left,” Kip says casually.

“Oh?”

“Decided he didn’t fit,” Garvehl adds.

One of the Pitchcliff boys is standing there, looking more than a little nervous.

“Am I gonna have to explain a body to the Carja?” Erend asks, his voice calm and deliberate.

Kip’s eyes flick up, and there’s nothing there but determination. He’d known Erend was around the corner, and he hadn’t _cared_. It hadn’t been for an audience; it had been true anger. The honor of one Vanguardsman is the honor of them all, and while casual ribbing is the keystone of their morale, actual denigration is _not_.

 _We're her tribe now_.

“Nah,” Kip says, laconically stretching to pop the joints in his neck. “He said he was headed back to Free Heap _anyway_ , and we helped him with directions. Although,” he frowns, turning to Garvehl, “which bridge tends to have the Snapmaws nearby? North or east?”

“Pretty sure it’s east.” Garvehl puts on a show of concern. “Wait. Which way’d we tell him to go?”

“Suddenly I don’t remember.”

Erend can’t thank them, because even if he’d handled it the same way - and there’s a strong chance he would have, faster and harder and without offering the potential mercy of the Snapmaws - it would have still been wrong. He didn’t kill Dervahl despite every drop of blood screaming for hot vengeance. This wasn't even that severe of an offense, just air arranged in thoughtless sound. He’d have had to swallow back his own ire and be the bigger man, and he _would_ have, because there aren’t so many of the Vanguard that they can spare a man.

There’s a wedding in six weeks, and he needs every man he can get. “This _wasn’t_ a Vanguard matter.”

“Haskel wasn’t Vanguard,” Kip says firmly.

Erend glances at the Pitchcliff kid’s big, worried eyes. “I’m the captain,” he says to Kip tightly. “Next time, you come to me.”

“Not gonna _be_ a next time,” Kip growls.

“I said _I’m the captain_ ,” Erend snaps. “I’m the one who decides if there’s a next time or not. Got it?”

The Vanguardsman grits his teeth, but grudgingly nods.

Erend points at the kid from Pitchcliff. “He’s one of us now, too. Be a mentor, not a meathead.”

If anything, the kid looks even _more_ scared, because Kip throws an arm around his shoulder and steers him toward the practice ring. “Hear that, Gadger? I’m a _mentor_. Let’s go mentor some axework, eh?”

 

****

 

Some days later, Erend finds himself walking along one of the palace halls with Aloy. He’s confirming potential bottlenecks. Aloy’s going...somewhere. They aren't going together as much as they're both going in the same direction.

She’ll come back. She has to. His job is to be the safe haven, the quiet strength that stands calm and steady for her return.

They round a corner, and unexpectedly catch Avad. “Aloy,” the Sun King says. “I want to speak with you.”

She flares, and Erend can _see_ the anger boiling up. She’s been avoiding everyone in the city, and he’s absolutely sure more than a few royal envoys have been rebuffed. There’s steel in Avad’s voice, and after a pause that’s longer than it should be, Aloy finally settles on the balls of her feet; relent is too calm a word.

“As the Sun King, there are aspects of my position that cannot be ignored,” Avad says. “Whatever our personal relationship, Erend is the captain of my Vanguard, charged with protecting my family and my interests. For him to leave his post for any duration of time represents a significant investment of my resources, and no small demonstration of my faith.”

Erend doesn’t like where this is going. There’s an echo of the day Avad accused Erend of profaning Ersa’s memory, and he’d been right, he’d been so right to do that, but this is _Aloy_ -

“You _don’t-_ ” Aloy starts, but Avad silences her with a hand.

“I will not suffer an interruption,” he says. “You will hear what I have to say.”

Erend’s throat is closing up. He’s going to have to choose between Aloy and his home, Aloy and his king, Aloy and the man who should have been his brother-in-law-

He’s going to choose Aloy. It’ll be a mistake, a huge, stupid mistake, but he’ll choose her every single time,

“Listen to me,” Avad says. “I am the Sun King. I am burdened with a responsibility that dictates all aspects of my life. I was not the eldest son. I was not destined for this position, and the fact that I fought to claim it makes me that much more dedicated to the success and health of my people.”

Aloy is breathing hard, ready to lash out or run.

“You,” he continues, and Erend is going to be sick. This is it. This is _it_ \- “Aloy, you came into my city with grave news. You demanded I raise an army, and I did. When the battle came, my people died. My city suffered. I asked you to explain, and you did. I can’t pretend I understood it all, or even a mere fraction of it, but I saw the damage HADES brought down upon us, and I knew everything you said was true.

“Listen to me,” Avad goes on. “I didn’t ask to be the son of a murderous madman. The deeds done in my father’s name are heinous and unforgivable. Members of my tribe - members of my _family_ \- have committed crimes for which I and my people can never fully atone. I didn’t choose to have royal blood and yet it runs in my veins. Should I have turned a blind eye to my father’s atrocities? Should I have walked away from my people?”

Erend suddenly has no idea what’s happening, and clearly, neither does Aloy. She’s shifted a little, her mouth curling towards a frown.

“We are more alike than you would let yourself believe,” Avad tells her calmly. “We were born carrying a terrible burden. We’ve each been given an impossible task, and instead of folding beneath the weight, we’ve chosen to fight.”

He takes a breath. “You told me about HADES, and I gave you everything I could. Why would I not do the same for HEPHAESTUS, Aloy? Have we no trust between us?”

She’s blindsided. They both are.

“My responsibility is to the Sundom,” Avad says. “The Red Raids were conducted in the name of the Derangement. How am _I_ not as invested in this as you?” His hands abruptly go to fists. “By the Sun, _tell_ me the things! A year after my city almost burned to the ground, I have to beg the details from _Erend?_ If you’d come back unharmed, if the Nora had let you freely claim what you needed, what would you have done? When would you have told me? When Thunderjaws roared along every trade route and Rockbreakers threw themselves at my walls? When something unimaginable came to destroy us all?”

Aloy stares.

“As a king, I am furious you refused to make me aware of a threat to the Sundom. As a _friend_ …” He shakes his head.

There’s a long, shaky silence, her breath hitched and damp.

“Let me give you what you need,” Avad entreats. “What the Nora have done is unconscionable. I swear to you I will not make the same mistake.”

“I _don’t_ -” she tries.

“As a gesture of my faith in you,” Avad says firmly, “I have placed the entire college of scholars at your disposal. Many of our greatest minds were lost to the Sun Ring, but not all, and they’ve already been told they will be granted whatever resources they require.” He levels his gaze at Aloy. “None of us know more about the old world than you, but do not mistake our ignorance for lack of intelligence. Tell us where to look. Tell us what questions to ask, and we will follow. Elisabet Sobek had the entire world behind her for Zero Dawn,” he says, and Aloy goes stiff and shocked. “I can’t guarantee you all of mankind, but the Sundom, at least, is at your disposal.”

She's barely even breathing, and she doesn't move when Avad comes to take her hands in his own.

“It would not have been possible for me to wrest Meridian from my father without support, and now I support you,” he says, and glances soberly at Erend. “It seems fate has also blessed us both to have an exceptional Oseram by our side.”

Aloy just stares.

“You have allies,” Avad tells her. “More than that, you have friends. Take what you need from us. On my word, it's given freely.”

She’s silent for a long moment, and then abruptly, she wrenches her hands free and storms away.

This is the biggest gift Avad could possible offer, an unimaginable display of support, and Aloy has just _walked away._

People are _killed_ for lesser offenses, and even Avad-

He almost can’t see through the panic exploding in his head. “Thank you,” Erend croaks. “...she  means thank you-”

“Her apologies aren’t yours to make.”

“She doesn’t-”

“I trust you, and I trust that what you said about the world is true.” Somehow, Avad’s voice isn’t angry. It’s just quiet and sad, and he shakes his head. “My duty is to the safety and health of my people. They owe me no gratitude for doing what I have been charged to do. If there is any gratitude owed, it’s to Aloy, for continuing to be the conduit between the old world and ours, despite everything it costs her.”

Erend’s known Avad for years, but there are still moments when it hits him like a hammer to the head how _good_ a man he is. There’s no doubt as to why Ersa chose to be with him, or why the Sundom thrives under his rule.

“I lost my brother in front of my eyes,” Avad murmurs, “and my father and my people on the same day.” He looks at Erend. “Without Ersa, I would never have recovered.”

“She was good at that.”

Avad turns toward Erend, his expression becoming fond and familiar. “You do well, my friend,” he says. “I hope you trust your strength as strongly as I do.”

 

****

 

Aloy doesn’t mention the conversation, but it clearly isn’t ignored.

Machine parts start to accumulate, first on the table, and then on the floor around it, piled up against the walls and spilling out into the foyer. Erend doesn’t know what she’s working on, but she stays up late, squinting in the lamplight, her hair perched in a messy bundle at the top of her head.

They mostly don’t talk. At first, it was excruciating, but he knows how to take a hit. He knows how to be still. He _misses_ her, but in the depth of his heart, he hopes this is just winter. She’ll come back like the blaze of summer, and he’ll gratefully give himself up into the flame.

In the meantime, there books and diagrams, sparkworkers and scholars. He doesn't understand the tools she acquires, but when he comes home, she’s bent over tiny glowing shards, surrounded by the crisp smell of lightning.

Her eyes are hollow in the sharp, flickering light, but if he looks deeply enough, there’s a faint glimmer of purpose.


	59. Chapter 59

It’s two months to the wedding, and Erend is alive.

Objectively, he’s doing well. He’s doing better than well. He’s awake and alert. They’d lost one of the Vanguard recruits, but the others are folding in like well-forged steel. It’s not nearly as many men as he wants, but he doesn’t get a choice. He takes the weapon he has and hones it to a bloodless slice.

His men are strong and smart. They were already the best, and they’re following him to be even better. He meets them with the sunrise and works with them late into the night. One of the local tavern owners has the balls to complain about his diminished clientele, and it takes every bit of Erend’s self-control to swallow back a feral grin.

He spends more time with the Carja garrison commander. Drills are staged. Patrol areas drawn up and reworked and then reworked again. Weaknesses are assessed. Vantage points are established, blind spots eliminated. The Carja have never truly been invaded; the only reason Meridian is so defensible is due to its position on the butte, but Erend is a soldier. He’s seen Oseram cannons pound against this stone and these walls, and now that he’s on the inside, he knows exactly where to fortify.

Celebrants are slowly starting to trickle into the city. He has no idea how many will eventually arrive. Avad’s father’s first marriage was a huge festival, a blissful joy in the days before his descent into madness. Jiran’s second was a matter of formality in a fearful city, Itamen quickly conceived in the wake of Kadaman’s execution and Avad’s narrow escape.

Now, Avad is a blazing pillar of hope and peace, and Talanah stands beside him as a strong, steady bridge between old nobility and new tradition. The Red Raids are over, and all the neighboring tribes are welcome in the Sundom. Erend doesn’t expect many Banuk to make the long journey from their frozen home, and if any Nora attempt to enter the city, they’ll have to do so at the blade of his axe. The Oseram, on the other hand, will arrive in droves: any reservations his people might have about a Carja alliance will dissolve in the face of drinking and revelry.

It’s going to be everyone in the Sundom, and they’re all going to converge on Meridian. He doesn’t envy the Carja garrison their duty; his men are responsible only for the safety of the royal family, but the Carja guards have to contend with a city full of visitors and the inevitable tent city that will spread around the buttes. It’ll be a lucky thing if the monsoons hold off.

“There’s going to be a lot of people in places where there are already a lot of machines,” he says to Aloy, dropping down on the stairs to wipe the day’s sweat and grit from his face. “There’s no way there won’t be blood.”

She threads a strand of wire through what looks like a Scrapper heart, pinning it in place with a tiny sizzle of light. He _thinks_ she’s rigged a sparker up to some kind of pen, but the entire table is such an impossible jumble of parts that he really can’t tell. “I’m working on it,” she mumbles around the shard held in her teeth.

“I trust you,” he says, and at that, she finally looks up, the captured lightning of the sparker reflected in the copper-green of her eyes.

She isn’t herself. She hasn’t been herself for months. He won’t allow himself to think of this as the new her. She’s calmer than she was, but she’s still quiet and distant.

He’s suddenly hit with an overwhelming wave of fondness. He knows how to take a hit, but it’s because he’s had it beaten into him from the day he was born. He’d given up on himself. He’d let himself slide into the violence, the alcohol a numbing salve. He'd made himself into a scar, a hard knot of tissue, touch and resolute.

Aloy’s taken just as many hits, but she's stayed fierce and dynamic. She was six when Rost told her what she had to do to win the Proving, and she didn’t stop until she _did_. Bruised, grieving, furious, she set out to track Eclipse, and she saved the world in the process.

Anything she puts her mind to becomes something she’s accomplished. He’s in awe of her. She’s clenched in on herself, but she’s still life and light and heat, and she will never change. Not in the ways that matter.

“I love you,” he says, because it’s true.

When he finally heaves himself to his feet, he staggers over to palm the back of her head and kiss her hair. “Going to bed,” he tells her. “Don’t stay up too late.”

There’s something soft in her eyes. “I won’t.”

 

****

 

He’s mostly asleep when he feels her slide in next to him.

“Are you awake?” she whispers.

“Not really.” He cracks one eye. “What’s up?”

“Why are you still here?”

“...I live here.”

“No, idiot.” There’s a trace of her old self in her voice, and _oh_ , he wants that. He’s suddenly wide awake and ready to chase it, to grasp it in his hands and pull her back into the light.

“Not going anywhere else,” he says, because she’s not talking about the walls around them, and it’s the longest exchange they’ve had in weeks.

“You could,” she says quietly. “If you wanted.”

No, he can’t. Not now, not ever. “I don’t want to.”

She’s silent a moment. “What if you do...later?”

He won’t. He already knows that, but even if he has the courage to say it, she won’t believe him. “That’s for then.” And, because he has to: “Why are _you_ still here?”

She take a breath. “What if this doesn’t work out? What if…what if this is like the Derangement? No one saw it coming, and it just crept in, and now everything rests on it.”

He knows what she’s asking. He wants to scream at her, to take her face in his hands and kiss her, to tell her over and over and over that she’s the only thing he’s ever going to want, and he’s as sure of that as he’s sure the sun is going to rise.

She’s not asking about him; she’s asking about herself. “Gears get worn down,” he says instead. “If you don’t check them periodically, if you don’t make sure they still fit, they’ll break.” He pushes himself up on his elbows. “I’m good at maintenance.”

“What if I’m not?”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“I’m _serious_.”

“Then we’ll figure it out,” he says. “I never expected you, and here we are.”

There’s a long quiet moment, the only sound a distant rattle of cart wheels on cobbles as a night porter passes beneath the window. “Where is here?”

 _Marry me_ , he almost says. _Let me be your husband and I will go anywhere you want to go. I’ll be anywhere you want to be. Take my hands and take my heart. They’re already yours, and if you marry me, I’ll make sure you know it every single day of your life._

He can’t say it. The moment doesn’t feel right, not when she’s hanging on the edge of something he can barely see. “Here is here,” he says. “Figuring things out, the way we always are.”

“I feel like I’ve been asleep." Her voice is almost inaudible, crushed hard and stiff.

“Lots of heavy lifting,” he says. “Maybe you needed to be.”

“It’s not fair to you.”

“Don’t make my decisions for me.”

She glances over. “Really?”

“I’m not just here for the good stuff,” he says quietly. “I’m here for _you_.”

There’s a long pause, and then she hesitantly settles down against his good shoulder. “Erend,” she whispers. “I’m so _sad_.”

“I know.” He _does_ , and he wonders _every day_ if he would have felt the same way after Ersa died, if he hadn’t been drowning himself. He presses his lips to her forehead. “I know it doesn’t help, but I’m so, so sorry.”

“...thanks.”

He takes a slow, deep breath, letting the air stretch into the broad cage of his chest. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Tell me you love me,” Aloy whispers. “I just...it’s nice to hear.”

Erend rolls to his side, taking her face in his hands and grinning. “That’s the easiest thing in the _world._ ”

She wants him to tell her he loves her, and by the forge, he _will._ He loves her so very, very much, and she feels like a riverbed gone starved and dry. She’s so small and cold, but when he kisses her, her mouth opens beneath his, and _oh_ , this is what he’s missed.

“I love you,” he murmurs into her mouth, and then against her jaw: “I _love_ you.”

He takes the words and slowly pulls them down the curve of her neck, into the hollow of her collarbone. He makes his hands into a vanguard, pushing away clothes so the sound can flow unhindered.

He knows the shape of the letters, his tongue becoming a pen to trace  _I love you_ into the tender space between her breasts. _I love you_ curves around her ribs and across the long, soft plane of her belly. He tucks _I love you_ into the valley of her hips, tangling _I love you_ into the downy fluff just below.

“I love you,” he breathes between the fortress of her thighs, drawing her in with the inhale. She’s flooded and shaking, her glorious musk breaking over him like precious rain. Every syllable is a grateful prayer, a delirious exaltation for something he’d been terrified was lost forever.  _I love you_ , as bright and sweet as the taste of her on his tongue.

He’s so far beyond words. _I love you_ , he tells her, instilling his devotion into her skin. _I love you_ , infused into her sweat. _I love you_ twined into her movement, and _I love you_ keened as she tumbles bonelessly from the crest.

 _I love you_ , he tells her. _I love you I love you I love you_ , again and again until he hears it echoed back with pure and drunken bliss.  

 

****

 

The next day, she looks up at him from her pile of machine parts, and there’s a light in her eyes like the first rays of dawn. It’s soft and it’s hesitant, her hopeful expression offered up like an apology.

He leans over to kiss the smile from her lips, the glory of her still sharp in his moustache.

She’s coming back. She’s coming home.


	60. Chapter 60

Erend’s on the stairs with a bowl perched on his knees when Aloy abruptly sits upright. “I think I’ve got it.”

He dabs the hunk of savory cornbread around, soaking up the last bits of boar gravy. The apartment has become a whirlwind of machine parts, the couch currently buried under a heap of plating and wire. “Yeah?”

“Dervahl had a lure,” she says. “I didn’t know enough to see anything other than that it was transmitting a signal, but it lured the Glinthawks to Pitchcliff.” She holds up what looks like a chunk of Scrapper radar, bristling with wires and tubes, the long antennae bobbing with the motion. “I think this will work.”

“Isn’t the point to _avoid_ the machines?”

“Glinthawks and Scrappers are attracted to dead machines, and if one comes, others always follow. Somehow, they tell each other when they’ve found something to scrap.” She frowns at the device. “If I can lure them in, there has to be a way to repel them.”

“Is that something HEPHAESTUS is going to notice?”

Aloy shakes her head. “This is the best we’ve got right now. If the Derangement is escalating because machines are getting killed, and machines are getting killed because they’re aggressive to humans, if we keep the machines and humans apart, it might buy us some time.”

She absently taps one finger on her lips. “We know where Shellwalker trails are. They don’t deviate much. Glinthawks and Scrappers can be lured away. Anything with a radar - Sawtooth, Ravager, Thunderjaw - _maybe_ they can be tricked into thinking there’s a threat where there isn’t one.”

“That still means something has to plant the threat.”

“That’s going to be me,” she says frankly. “Besides, I’ve got to test it somehow.”

“Can we not...in the house?” he says weakly. _Can we not ever_ is clearly more than he can wish for.

“Idiot,” she says, and the way her eyes sparkle tells him that this might be an excellent idea for mankind, but for one Erend Vanguardsman, it’s _really_ going to hurt.

 

****

 

It’s not until she starts assembling her climbing gear that he realizes exactly where they’re going, and his stomach sinks into his feet.

Aloy pauses, a coil of rope loose in her hands. “You don’t have to,” she says, her face gone soft and concerned.

He hasn’t been up on the Alight since they carried him down. He’s mostly pretended the Spire doesn’t exist until it looms over him in his dreams, but if she’s going, he’s going with her, memories be damned. “Somebody’s gonna have to hit the Glinthawks if they decide to stay,” he points out.

“I can handle it.”

“Didn’t say you couldn’t.” He grasps the haft of his axe. “Besides, you think I’d let you have all the fun?”

The grin lights up her whole face, and fire and spit, he loves her. He’s _missed_ her, and here she is, bright and resplendent as the midmorning sun.

The winding path to the top of the butte was decimated, and Erend would bet shards it will never be fully repaired. Instead, a series of rope ladders has been constructed, the rungs stained dark and thick; he immediately knows it’s blood, ground deeply into the fiber despite almost a year of rain and wind.

Erend doesn’t remember being brought down. _Looked like meat_ , Tandin had said.

He suppresses a shudder.

He’s not a climber, not by normal standards and certainly not compared to Aloy. She vaults easily ahead of him, and if he’s a little slower than he could be...well, he’s got an _excellent_ view, and it would be a crime not to enjoy it.

She glances over her shoulder and winks.

At the top, he heaves himself onto solid stone and lets the ground hold him still until his heart stops pounding in his chest. The sky is clear and blue, the usual Glinthawks mercifully absent. The rainy season is still a few weeks away, and the plants are knobbled and bare. The Spire reaches up, glimmering and bright.  

If he hadn’t been here, he might not believe the odd, mirrored tower was the epicenter of the battle for the end of the world.

Aloy has some destination in mind, but Erend wanders, his blood gone cold in his veins. What little he does remember comes in fits and starts, and he doesn’t know which parts are memory and which are just fragments of nightmare. The dirt is twisted and torn, leftover machine skeletons strewn like discarded toys. The biggest one - the one with the rockets, the one that turned steady and unstoppable as it rained death - is slumped amid the broken balustrade.

He almost remembers that. It’s less an image and more a clench deep in his body, a grim certainty that lingers in the corner of his vision.

He almost died up here. They all did.

Suddenly, he needs Aloy. He needs to be next to her. He needs to smell her hair and feel the heat of her skin, light and life and everything good and bright in this world.

She’s standing in front of a huge metal sphere, her hands moving as she does something with her Focus.

 _PRIORITIZE ENTITY_ roars in his head, and he has to take a few huge breaths to keep the dizziness at bay. “How is this not terrifying?” he croaks.

“We survived,” she says absently, flicking at empty air.

“We almost didn’t.”

That makes her turn, and oh, he shouldn’t have said that. Her eyes are hard and dark. “Don’t, Erend. Just- don’t.”

It would be so much worse now, for both of them. She’s wearing his scent on her skin, and he’s savoring the lingering taste of her in his mouth. There’s a hard knot of tissue at his shoulder and a moonscape of scars across her belly.

 _Marry me,_ he almost blurts out. _We might not get another chance._

She finally stands back, shaking her head. “I thought there might be something left of HADES, something we could use, but there’s nothing.”

“You light the lanterns, I’ll start the parade,” he says.

She scowls. “I mean it.”

“So do I.” A thought occurs to him. “Did you destroy HADES, or did it _go_ somewhere?”

They both consider the hulking metal ball. “I have no idea. It felt like I shut it down, but...it couldn’t be gone,” Aloys says. “Elisabet made a copy of _herself_. There’s no way there isn’t a copy of everything else.”

“You aren’t a copy,” he says.

Aloy makes an angry, sweeping gesture down her body. “Ninety-nine point four-seven percent, Erend. Tell me that’s not a copy.”

“I’m looking at you right now,” he says. “I’m not looking at Elisabet.”

She rolls her eyes. “Different name, same tool-”

Erend grabs at her arm as she turns away. “Tools are _made_ ,” he says fiercely. They’ve had this fight over and over again, and he will square up every single time. She’s standing in front of him not quite herself, the clinging fog of wherever she’d gone blurring her edges, and he will _not_ let her fall back away. “They’re assembled. Someone took the parts for my axe and bound them together. You were born, Aloy. They took a tiny bit of Elisabet Sobek and you grew. You’ve got a heart and lungs and the most incredible mind I’ve ever known.”

“Elisabet-”

“All you have of her is her legacy. You’ve got your own life and your own skin, and everything you’ve done is something you’ve figured out for yourself. If you were made, they’d have taken everything you needed to know and put it in your brain. That’s not what happened.”

She bares her teeth. “You saw Eleuthia-”

“I don’t know anything about what happens before something’s born,” he snaps, “but I know when it comes out, it changes. A seed turns into a tree and a poult becomes a turkey, and you and I aren’t the kids we were.” It’s not how he means to explain it. He’s flailing, the words pouring out like slag, but slag comes from ore, and maybe, just maybe, some clean metal will mercifully emerge. “As far as I can tell, the thing in Eleuthia was an egg, and being in an egg doesn’t make a poult a tool. It makes it a turkey.”

It’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever said, but it stops her dead in her tracks. “A _turkey."_  She snorts. “Thanks, Erend.”

“You _aren’t_ a copy.”

He’s absolutely sure she’s going to walk away, but then she’s biting her lips and pushing the palm of her hand into her bridge of her nose. “A turkey,” she repeats.

It’s not his finest moment. “...I could have done better.”

The grin escapes, and she shakes her head. “You should have just stopped at the egg. I actually kind of like that.”

He tries, _oh_ he tries, but in the end, it’s physically impossible for him to resist. “...also means you could get laid.”

Aloy stares at him for so long, he’s absolutely sure he’s about to die, but the fist that finally connects with his shoulder is barely bruising. “Erend Vanguardsman, I’m calling down every Glinthawk within a hundred miles just for that.”

Fire and spit, he loves her.

 

****

She puts the haphazard ball of wire and plating on the ground, and spins something in her Focus.

Erend’s first thought is a disbelieving _it works_.

His next is _oh shit._

 

****

 

There are Glinthawks _everywhere_. More Glinthawks than Erend’s ever seen, and probably more than he’s ever going to see, because he’s got his head down and his axe up and _he_ _doesn't have time to fucking count_.

He hears Aloy whoop in celebration. It’s a wild, feral ululation that goes straight to his marrow, his blood surging in electric response.

“Can you turn it off?” he shouts.

“I have no idea!” she yells back, a triumphant blaze of light and fury amid the storm of machines.

He shouldn’t be laughing. They are _absolutely_ going to die up here on the same ground where they almost died before, but she’s a blistering storm at his side as the ice rains down, and there isn’t enough room in the entire world for how much he loves her.

 

****

 

Once, Erend stood in the cold air of an ancient tomb, and watched a column of light speak to a woman with Aloy’s face.

“In you, all things are possible,” the entity called GAIA had said.

Erend already knows, but as the Glinthawks abruptly rise back into the sky, their lenses calm and blue, his faith is reaffirmed.

Aloy isn’t Elisabet. She’s so much _more._

 

****

 

They sit amid strewn machine corpses, the impossible device cradled in Aloy’s lap.

“You did it,” Erend says. He’s damp with melted ice, blood in his mouth and fire in his bones. It’s been way too long since he’s had a good fight, and now he leans back, enjoying the way the afternoon sun dances in her hair. The surviving Glinthawks are dark shapes in the distance, slowly winging back to wherever they came from.

She threads her fingers through the bundles of wire, as tenderly as if she were braiding grass. “Sylens never did anything like this,” she says quietly. “He could have. I saw his workshop.” She grinds her teeth. “He could have saved so many _lives-_ ”

“He’s a bung,” Erend says, stretching. “That’s not new information.”

Aloy palms the long antennae. “This is a weapon,” she says. “Dervahl’s lure killed people. I could give one of these to every trader from here to Ban-Ur and they’d have safe passage, but someone will eventually turn it the wrong way, and people will die.”

‘You can’t stop people from being people,” Erend tells her.

She’s not Sylens. They both already know she’s going to make as many of these things as she possibly can and spread the instructions like a sunrise.

“This isn’t a solution,” she says. “Without GAIA, the subroutines are going to keep getting more and more chaotic.”

“This buys us time.” He leans over to kiss a trickle of meltwater from her forehead. “Time is exactly what we need.”

They need time to find HEPHAESTUS. There was nothing in Eleuthia that revealed its sister facilities, and no hint as to where to search next. Erend knows he doesn’t understand even a fraction of the technology, but Aloy is adamant that when the subroutines escaped, there’s no way to know where they could have gone. The fact that HADES took refuge in the brain of a Metal Devil so close to the Sundom is nothing but sheer luck.

Erend doesn’t want to think about what could have happened if HADES had been out of reach. Maybe GAIA would still have released the seed that grew into Aloy, but the world would have died long before she could have saved it.

It makes him shudder.

“The next test,” Aloy says, “is to see if this thing can make machines _run_.”

 

****

 

Erend isn’t a hunter. He doesn’t like seeking out machines if he doesn’t have to, but he’s not about to let Aloy go alone, so they go hunting.

She sneaks through the tall grass and places the device by the riverbank, activating it with a single twist. The herd of Striders explode into motion exactly as if an Oseram cannonball landed in their midst, and they bolt into the jungle.

“Did you see their lenses?” Aloy breathes. “Blue. They stayed _blue_.”

The machines ran, but they were calm. They didn’t feel threatened.

“I wonder if I can adjust the power,” she muses, and Erend settles back on his heels, content to watch her work.

The next herd spooks too, but not to the same degree. She dials the power back further and tries again, and this time, the machines just...walk away. There’s no rush. No hurry.

Aloy’s eyes glow with a light he’s never seen, fierce and fervent. “Cover me,” she says, and gets to her feet.

The sky is moody and gray, the evening sun casting purple shadows through the trees. Glowbugs bob in the tall grass, floating like sparks in the dusk. She picks up the device and heads toward the river, toward a herd of Chargers slowly tilling the dusty soil.

He’s ready to move. His hands are on his axe and his heart’s in his throat. She’s got the device tucked under one arm, her spear up and ready.

The attack never comes. She walks right through the herd, right in front of machines that are wild and untamed. They look at her, snorting as she passes, and turn back to their ordained task.

“ _Ha!_ ” Aloy suddenly shouts, and the Chargers all stiffen in alarm, heads jerking up at the sound.

She’s dead, she’s _dead-_

The machines bound away, dense jungle foliage fanning behind them. They run, but they’re not alarmed.

He’s moving before he can stop himself, water churning around his calves as he charges into the river. She meets him halfway, the device cradled in her arms, her entire face brighter than midsummer noon.

“It works,” he gasps, “it _works-_ ” and then she’s kissing him, her mouth hot and brilliant against his own.

Of all the things Erend’s never expected, he could _never_ have expected this, but here it is. The future is tucked between them, a small, irregular chunk of hope with long yellow tendrils. “This changes everything,” she says, her voice hushed in awe.

It’s not the device. It’s _her_. It’s always been her, this impossible, wild-haired woman, the pretty girl from the middle of nowhere who takes everything she touches and makes it better.

He can’t even speak, so he just presses his forehead against hers and holds on tight.


	61. Chapter 61

The device works on Striders. It works on Chargers. It calms Broadhorns but doesn’t banish them; if they leave, it’s because there’s nothing of interest. Glinthawks do the same thing. Scrappers require a stronger signal, but if it’s too high, they get annoyed and start to investigate.

“Needs more finesse,” Aloy says as she dives into cover beside him.

There’s a cut on her forehead and a ragged gash at Erend’s elbow. “You think?”

Unexpectedly, Watchers _love_ it. They immediately hone in, not out of aggression but out of chirping curiosity. Even set to “banish”, the little machines swarm eagerly. “This is going to be a problem,” Aloy says, even though her face says otherwise. The device is tucked against her chest, her features lit with the Watchers’ shuddery blue glow. They nudge her like boar piglets all trying to get closer; it should be terrifying, but somehow it’s _not_ , and her startled laugh is a bright cascade of sound.

Erend remembers the dream, of how a Watcher had guarded her when she slept in a nest of leaves.

As a test, she sets the device on the ground, and the Watchers immediately follow its path. When they’re not looking, she sets her spear and pacifies one, its head rearing up in confusion as the shimmering blue ropes. In a normal herd, the wild ones would immediate attack their pacified buddy, but here, they stare in a kind of odd confusion.

“I’m going to turn it off,” Aloy says quietly. “Be ready.”

He hates this part. So far, they’ve been lucky - no major injuries, just a few good hits from the Scrappers - but part of knowing how the device works means knowing its range of influence.

She twists the controls, and the thing goes dark. Erend has his axe up, fully prepared to jump in: five Watchers are three Watchers more than he considers a fair fight, even with one pacified and ready to distract the others.

What _should_ happen is the unpacified four flaring to scarlet alert, coming down hard with shredding claws and blinding sunflash. Instead, the four stare first at the pacified one, then at the device, then at Aloy, and back to the device. Lenses grind in confusion, soft warbles that almost sound _disappointed_.

And then suddenly, one of the Watchers stretches its neck and steps toward Aloy. She raises her spear, ready to stab its exposed heart, but the machine chirps and bobs in place.

“What’s it _doing?_ ” Erend whispers.

“I don’t have any idea,” Aloy hisses back. “Hold still!”

The Watcher grumbles impatiently, and stretches its neck back further. It look like a goose getting ready to bite, but its lens is still blue.

“You turned that thing off, right?” Erend asks.

“Yeah.” She takes a breath and puts the head of her spear to the machine’s offered chest, pacifying blue ropes curling out through the Watcher’s architecture.

As soon as it’s done, the Watcher steps back with a satisfied burble.

They’re struck dumb. Erend’s body has been severed at the spine. “I think it _wanted_ that,” Aloy manages, her voice caught somewhere in the back of her throat.

The others circle nervously. “I have to do this,” she finally says. “We need to know.”

Inexplicably, Erend’s heart clenches in his chest. “Ready when you are.”

Aloy leaps forward and strikes one of the wild ones. It’s a quick, clean kill, and the corpse drops to the ground, twitching with residual electricity. They brace themselves for the onslaught, but again, _it doesn’t come_.

Two tame Watchers, two wild. The wild ones dance away in alarm, lenses flaring gold. The tame ones creak with indignation and start toward their fellows, but there isn’t a fight. All four machines examine the dead one, and then turn to stare at Aloy. The wild ones slowly relax, their lenses fading gradually fading back to blue.

“I had a dream once,” Erend blurts out. “I was walking in the jungle and stumbled right into a Watcher. It looked right at me and I thought for sure I was dead, but then I saw _you_. You were asleep right beside it. You told it I wasn’t a threat, and it walked away.”

She snorts. “So you’re saying you predicted the future.”

“I’m saying it’s _really fucking weird._ ”

What they’re seeing is impossible. Erend and Aloy stare at the Watchers. The Watchers stare back.

“Boo!” Aloy yells, throwing up her arms.

The machines skip back, a chorus of grinding lenses as if they’re trying to figure out what just happened.

Eventually, Erend’s bad leg starts to cramp, and he eases into a more relaxed stance. “Do we just…walk away?”

“I’m kind of afraid to turn my back.”

“What happens if you turn it back on?”

“Only if you’re ready.” She touches something on her Focus, and the device flickers back to life.

One Watcher stretches up to survey the terrain to Erend’s left. Another inspects a clump of broadleaf vine at its foot.

Aloy makes a slow movement with her hand, and all four jerk to attention. “Leave us alone, little ones,” she murmurs, and as if on cue, the machines turn and scatter away into the jungle.

 

****

 

The day continues to be weird. She turns the device back on, and two more Watchers catch the signal. Aloy turns the power up, and they go away. She turns the power down, and they come back. They follow like imprinted poults until Aloy finally climbs a butte and sends a rope back down for Erend.

“I’m not saying this isn’t good,” she says, peering over the edge at the machines, who are now staring up at them and warbling forlornly. “It’s just _really_ weird and I don’t understand how it’s happening.”

Against all sense and reason, they seek out a Sawtooth. Aloy sets the device to lure, and one comes bounding down the canyon. She sets it to banish, and the machine pulls itself up short. She and Erend are hiding in a dense patch of tall grass, but the Sawtooth pads straight toward them.

She offers it the device the same way she’d offered it to the Watchers. The Sawtooth reaches down with its mouth, and fire and spit, their protection is _gone-_

Their protection is _gummed_.

It’s called a Sawtooth because it has huge, spinning saws set in its massive maw. It was the first machine that didn’t seem to have a purpose other than attacking humans, and right now, its saws are off and it’s gingerly holding the device in its front fangs. It lifts it up, gently shakes it, and puts it back down. The machine snorts at Aloy, its saws flaring, and then turns to amble back down the canyon. Its lens has been blue the entire time.

Neither one of them can breathe.

“I need to do something really stupid,” Aloy finally says.

Erend grips the haft of his axe with a deep sigh. “I know.”

She turns the device off, and with one smooth movement, draws her bow and hits the retreating Sawtooth with a hardpoint arrow. It meets its mark with surgical precision, and the beast spins back around with a roar, its lens going scarlet with deadly intent.

The fight starts predictably. He and the Sawtooth charge each other. Erend scores a good hit and is rewarded by getting thrown halfway across the canyon. The machine is leaping for his throat when it abruptly drops back to its feet, its lens going amber as it shakes its head in confusion.

It snorts and paws at the ground, clearly annoyed, but twitches and resentfully ambles away.

Aloy comes and helps him to his feet. “More power that time.”

Erend rolls a kink from his neck. “I sure hope you’re writing all this down.”

 

****

 

The device mostly works.

Stalkers drop out of camouflage. They stomp in annoyance, skins flickering in an attempt to conceal. They hiss but don’t attack, even when provoked. When Aloy increases the power, they grumble and walk away.

“Pretty sure this is a miracle,” Erend says.

She frowns, and adjusts a cluster of wire. “It’s something.”

Back in Meridian, she leans back in her chair, the device on the table in front of her amid the usual mechanical chaos. “We’re thinking about this the wrong way,” she announces.

Erend is lying on the floor, trying to decide whether or not the Sawtooth broke a rib. He has a meeting with the Carja garrison commander in an hour, and he _really_ needs to talk with the quartermaster about requisitioning a better grade of steel to reinforce the southern gate. “Yeah?”

“Dervahl’s lure didn’t call the Glinthawks in to fight,” she says. “It just called them. It told them there was something worth investigating. When I turn the device the other way, I don’t think the machines see it as _banish_. I think we’re telling them that there’s nothing. If I increase the power, they get the message that there’s _really_ nothing.” She frowns. “They have to investigate because it’s an anomaly, but even if we’re there, they’re getting the message that there’s nothing, so they don’t attack.”

“Striders don’t investigate,” Erend points out.

“They don’t investigate anything,” she says. “They wander. It’s not in their code to seek things out. The Sawtooth, the Watchers: they’re all looking for something. They’re looking for a change in the environment. I want to say the Watchers find it...calming, but that's insane, right?”

“That one  _asked_ to be pacified."

"That's not what happened," she retorts. "It got close enough and I-"

"You  _saw_ it-"

"I don't know _what_ we saw."

He shakes his head. "Well, the Scrappers got pissed at it. No question there.”

She winces. “I blew a transformer.”

“ _What?_ ” He’s still nursing a decent gash on his chin.

“I couldn’t tell until we got back here,” she says defensively. “I think I increased the power too fast.”

“Please tell me you fixed it.”

“Of course I did. They should react the same way the Glinthawks reacted: nothing to scrap, so no reason to stay.”

If it doesn't work, it's going to hurt, but that's his job. "Then we'll go test it again.”

“Erend, I’m so sorry.” The regret in her voice is genuine, a sorrowful undertone that reminds him of the fight they keep having: _don’t take my hits for me_.

She wants maudlin, he can do maudlin. “This is the worst injury I’ve ever had,” he says quietly. “I can’t shave until it heals. My legendary good looks are ruined.”

That earns him the eye roll he’s aiming for, and he goes for the kill. “I’ll be _plain_. I’ll be nothing, and you’ll leave me for a handsome, well-bearded stranger. I’ll die cold and alone-”

She throws a coil of wire at him.

He grins.

 

****

 

The Snapmaws along the river _hate_ it. They thrash like they’ve been electrocuted, and scramble away as fast as they can. Bellowbacks seem not to notice, and wander away as disinterested as the Chargers did.

The Watchers are increasingly perplexing. If there’s one within a thousand feet, it charges toward the device as soon as Aloy powers it up, chittering eagerly. “I’m not saying this is bad,” she says, surveying the three currently standing like expectant geese. “I’m just not sure what it _means_. I’m telling them there’s nothing here, and it’s like they find _nothing_ fascinating.”

“The Eclipse could control Corrupted machines,” Erend offers. “Maybe this is the same. A... “ He dredges the word up from his overfilled brain. “...network?”

“Corrupted machines act uncomfortable,” Aloy says. She waves her arms at the Watchers and makes a feint to rush at them. They stagger back in surprise, but as soon as she stops, they perk back up as if waiting for instructions. It’s only when she dials the signal past their tolerance that the machines finally swish back into the undergrowth. “These don’t seem to mind, and if they were on a larger network, we’d have a hundred of them every time we powered up.”

“That could be a thing,” Erend says. “A whole army of Watchers.”

She gives him an alarmed look. “Don’t you dare.”

“Think about it,” he says. “A trading convoy carrying a device, escorted by two or three of these guys.”

Aloy frowns, but the way her eyebrows knit together tell him she’ll at least consider it. “I don’t know how long they’d stay passive. Besides, the signal required to turn away a Sawtooth is enough to drive a Watcher away, too.”

“Bring enough Watchers, you won’t need to turn the Sawtooth away.”

“The point is to not kill them,” she retorts.

“We still haven’t seen them kill each other,” he points out. “Might be worth a try.”

 

****

 

It’s a test they can’t avoid. She acquires an eager contingent of Watchers, and then they go hunting.

There’s an established Shell-walker trail within half a day of Meridian, and she and Erend head right to it. As soon as they’re in range of the device, the Shell-walkers themselves skitter in the opposite direction, while their two Longleg guardians come bounding to investigate.

The Longlegs’ lenses are amber and wary, but they don’t attack. They hiss and cackle, the Watchers chirping anxiously underfoot.

“They’re confused by the nothing, too,” Aloy whispers to Erend. She increases the signal, and the Longlegs immediately relax. It’s too much for the Watchers, and the tightly-knit cluster dissolves, each machine wandering off on its own.

“Interesting,” Aloy says, eyeing the Longlegs now strutting in a curious circle. “Not what I was looking for, but interesting.”

“Let’s go with it,” Erend says.

Finally, they find what they’re looking for: a decent herd of Snapmaws sunning themselves in the river. Aloy sets the device on the ground and fires a tearblaster arrow at the nearest one, and it rears back, blazing with anger. The two Longlegs charge forward, but as soon as they leave whatever bubble of protection offered by the device, they too flare red.

The fight doesn’t start. There seems to be a protective bubble around the device, and as soon as any of the aggressive machines come close, they lose interest and the alert fades away. The Snapmaws lumber to the far side of the river like grumpy old men, and the Longlegs come back to peer inquisitively at the device’s blue glow.

Aloy increases the signal. The Longlegs wander away. She powers it down, and both sets of machines flare and charge. She powers it back up, and they all go back to their business.

“If that thing ever dies, we’re in trouble,” Erend says.

“I’d better make sure it doesn’t die,” she agrees, hefting it up for the walk back to Meridian.

 

****

 

Everything they’re learning, everything they’ve seen - nothing is more important than one single fact: Aloy is _back_.

The device is an unexpected success and she rises with it like a cloud of blaze. This is more than she was before the Spire. This is more than she was before the Proving. This is victory honed by grief, a hard-edged triumph that shines from every pore.

What she’s done goes beyond mere tinkering. There’s skill in her hands and an impossible engine in her head, sparking connections Erend can’t possibly understand. He staggers behind her, blinded by her brilliance and stripped to his bones by her heat. She makes upgrades and takes a new device into the jungle for testing; he stands with his axe ready and his heart committed, solid muscle and brute force utterly devoted to her cause. Sometimes it doesn’t work and he gladly takes the hits, but sometimes it _does_ , and when she stands amid four grudgingly calm Scrappers, confident and terrifying as a goddess, he understands exactly what the Nora saw in her.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she snaps, when she’s turned up the power enough to make the machines run.

“You’re _gorgeous_ ,” he tells her, and means it. The things she’s doing, the way she’s taking the ruins of the Metal World and twisting them to her control, the wild cloud of her hair amid the blue glow of calm: he’s more transfixed than he’s ever been. There aren’t words to capture the depth of how much he loves her.

He loves her. He loves the feel of her, the way she finds him in rare moments amid the chaos of experimentation and duty. She twines her body around his own, drawing him down amid the sheets. He loves the way she pulls him around her, the way she rocks against him as he spreads her wide with his fingers. He loves the long, lean lines of her back and hips, the way the muscles in her shoulders ripple when she arches into the pillows. He loves the hard points of her fingernails in his skin, the way his name in her mouth goes hot and unsteady against his jaw. He loves being inside her, surrounded by her, possessed and claimed and consumed.

“I love you,” he croaks, caught between her thighs and slowly drowning in her sure, steady motion.

Her voice is an affirmation, heavy and damp as her hands sink into his hair. “I love you,” she breathes, and it’s everything he’s ever wanted. He goes to pieces, shattering into her heat, sobbing into the cradle of her arms.

This is nothing he’s ever deserved, a king’s wealth in the form of a woman. She obliterates him, reducing him to grateful ash only to bring him back with a quick kiss and a wink.

“Late night with the sparkworkers,” she says, as he’s slowly remembering what it means to have limbs. “Don’t wait up.”

 _Marry me_ , he wants to say, but she’s stolen any ability to speak along with his heart.


	62. Chapter 62

Aloy makes more devices. For lack of a better term, they’re coined “baubles”. Each one is tested as best it can.

They’re both trembling with success. There’s no real way to explain, so they station Avad and Marad on one of the higher balconies while Erend and Aloy walk straight at the herd of Snapmaws in the water below.

Erend holds the device. The Snapmaws scatter. Aloy sinks a flame-tip arrow into the closest one’s tail, and it swings around just as predicted. Erend stands his ground, and so does she: as soon as the machine gets within range, it bellows and backs away. After several long, ground-shaking roars, the entire herd stomps away, frustrated and incensed.

“I have no words,” Avad breathes, when they’re all back on the balcony. Aloy has the bauble easily balanced against her hip. “My most urgent question: how long does it work?”

She shrugs. “Until it doesn’t.”

He nods. “Do what you must. Everything you need is yours. This is-” he reaches out to the device, but draws his hands back at the last minute, like it’s something holy he can’t bring himself to touch. “Aloy, this changes everything.”

“For now.” Neither of them know if HEPHAESTUS notices. There’s no way to tell. There isn’t time to venture far enough to test the baubles on the bigger machines, the Thunderjaws and Ravagers that harry the trade routes further north.

“You continue to work miracles,” Avad tells her. “The world is blessed to have you in it, Aloy.”

She ducks her head, bright color crawling from her hair, but for once, she doesn’t protest.

 

****

 

The wedding is three weeks away, and the tent city outside Meridian is starting to swell. The biggest priority are the Snapmaws, and Aloy stations baubles at various points along the the river. Each one is accompanied by a Carja guard, a Vanguardsman, and a runner. It effectively cuts a third of Erend’s available force, but it’s _important_. There isn’t time for long-term testing of these things, and if one fails and the Snapmaws return or Striders start attacking, he needs to know immediately and be able to respond just as fast.

Celebrants flood through the gates. Families embrace long-distant relatives, and then inevitably start shouting fights that spill out into the streets. There’s a bloom in theft, and drunken brawls that happen in broad daylight. A particularly large skirmish erupts, and by the time Erend and his men wade into the fray, four separate taverns are involved.

“Been awhile since you got in a good barfight, Cap,” Garvehl says cheerfully, holding a spitting Carja outlander in a headlock.

Erend squares his shoulders and bullies his way between two screaming Oseram women. “Just as fun as I remember.”

“You don’t remember the _really_ good ones,” Kip chimes in.  “No one does.”

“Just get things calmed down, guys.” He ducks a slow right hook, and firmly asserts one of his own. “We’ve got better things to do.”

When it’s over, half the crowd is in lockup and he’s wearing a hell of a shiner under his left eye. Aloy takes one look at him and wordlessly offers a jar of freeze rime paste, which he gratefully accepts. She’s got a stack of power cores precariously balanced on one end of the table and four more Scrapper radar units by her feet.

He’s pretty sure she hasn’t slept more than a handful of hours in days. There’s a smear of grease across her chin and little curls of shaved metal peppered in her hair. Aloy is fierce and unstoppable, and even though it’s been almost a year, he _still_ can’t believe she’s here in his city, sharing his apartment, burying his furniture under a storm of machine parts.

“I _love_ you,” Erend says fervently, and when she leans back to let him steal a kiss, he tucks the taste of her inside his mouth to savor for hours.

 

****

 

There’s so much chaos that he’s constantly triaging what reports warrant his attention. He’s accepted that he’s going to miss something important, and he trusts his men to push the issue if it’s actually serious.

This is one he almost dismisses: there are dead machines in the jungle. It's not unusual to stumble across the lone, inexplicable corpse of a Watcher, but now there are _dozens_.

“I thought we'd told the hunters to hold off,” Erend snaps. “Is it outlanders? How many times do we have to _say_ -”

“Hunters say there isn't a scratch on them,” Eddic protests. “They're like the usual salvage, but they're bringing them in with _carts_.”

He thinks about the chirping devotion of the Watchers ensnared by the bauble’s calming glow. If they’ve gone completely tame, of course they'd be killed on sight by someone who didn't know better.

Fire and spit. It _has_ to involve the baubles. They’re turned up high enough to keep the Watchers from swarming, and the timing can’t be a coincidence.

Erend pinches the bridge of his nose. He doesn't have the time or resources, but...he's going to do this anyway. “Go to the College of Scholars. Ask for Ronnamet. Tell her what you just told me, and help her assemble a map of who's bringing these things in and where they're finding them. Someone in that camp is taking advantage of the situation and they need to _stop_ before they bring a Sawtooth down on us.”

Fire and spit. It _has_ to involve the baubles. The signal is as strong as Aloy can get it, and there's no way the timing is a coincidence.

When Eddic and Ronnamet come back two days later, Erend is so swamped with lesser nobles trying to sneak into the palace that he's almost completely forgotten.

The scholar spreads her map across the table, smoothing out the crisp reed paper. Meridian stands in the middle, the buttes a series of irregular shapes in dark ink. Each bauble is a steady blue circle. “The red dots each represent a machine,” Ronnamet says. “None killed by hunters, all found dead on their own.”

The map is littered with them, each bauble surrounded by a perfect cloud, and Erend’s stomach drops into his steel-clad boots. “All Watchers?”

Eddic nods. “The Snapmaws are clustered at each end of the river, very much alive and incredibly aggressive. It's like they want back in, and they’re _pissed_.”

One step forward, two steps back. He wonders if this is how Elisabet Sobek felt. “Ronnamet, I'm gonna ask you to keep looking into this. Eddic, what's your current patrol?”

“Western docks,” the Vanguardsman immediately says.

“Tell Jadgun it's his. You’re security now.”

The scholar frowns. “I grew up in the Rustwatch! I'm hardly-”

“Didn't say you were,” Erend says tiredly, “but this is way too big. You don't get a choice.”

He has to tell Aloy. She's not going to like it any more than he does.

He isn't wrong. She howls and hurls a sparker at the wall; it explodes in a snap of ceramic and lightning. “It's escalating whether we want it to or not!” Her hands go to her head. “Are we doing this, Erend? Are _we_ killing them?”

“The river would be choked with dead Snapmaws,” he says, grasping at any logic he can. “It's something else.”

“The Sawtooth started as something else,” she says desperately. “Nobody knew what it was, and then it started killing people-”

“We'll figure this out,” he says, even though neither of them believe it. He’s already late for his patrol, and he just doesn’t have _time_.

 

****

 

Predictably, winter grippe comes in with the guests and casually proceeds through the city. It's a common illness, more incapacitating than actually dangerous, but it fells half the Vanguard almost immediately, burning through the others in rolling waves.

The wedding is in twelve days, and Erend doesn’t have a single second to spare. He lasts the better part of a week, until Garvehl finds him shivering and swaying in place at the main gate. “Cap, you look like shit.”

Erend opens his mouth to protest and ends up puking into a nearby planter.

It lays him out for three days, and he’s caught in a maddening chasm of being acutely aware of everything he needs to do but too sick to do a damn thing about it. Aloy drowns him in potions, and then is just as belligerent and utterly ungrateful when he returns the favor.

“Tastes just as bad going down,” he offers as she's miserably slung over the toilet.

She responds with a gesture that is shockingly Oseram and _definitely_ one he hasn't taught her.

In some corner of his mind, he’s almost proud.

 

****

 

When he's back on his feet, he feels like he’s missed _everything_.

Everyone in the city is raising huge, breathtakingly bright flags and silk banners, and every single one of them is blocking a patrol route or line of sight. Every time he turns around, Erend is waving at some hapless celebrant: “Hey! That can’t be- no, I’m not saying you can’t _have_ it, I’m just saying- no, look, it just can’t be _there_ \- yes, I understand, but it’s gotta- I _am_ gonna take it down, I’m taking it down right _now_ , and I don’t care if your great-grandmother sewed it with her fucking _toes-_ ”

There are so many complaints lodged against him, it’ll take months to catalog them all. “Dare I ask?” Marad says in a rare moment, shuffling a heavy stack of papers on Avad’s desk.

“Better not,” Erend says. “Most of them say I’m worse than Dervahl.”

“Impressive,” the spymaster says.

“ _I_ think so.”

There’s so much to do, and the fever’s still making easy circles. “I’m not staying inside for this,” Talanah grumbles over Avad’s protests. “Better to get it now than have it in a week, right?”

It’s a valid point. If it’s possible to attract a grippe by sheer will, she does, and being Talanah, naturally recovers in a day and a half.

Itamen isn’t sick very long himself, but the palace is in chaos and he’s fretful and clingy. “You never come see me anymore,” he whines at Erend. “I thought we were friends.”

He couldn’t hurt Erend worse if he’d stabbed him straight in the kidneys. “I know, kid, but my job is to keep things safe around here, and right now, I’m really, really busy.”

Itamen scowls. “You said it was safe here already.”

“Safe for _you_ ,” Erend assures him. “Some of these other people party a little too hard, and then I’ve gotta go _glare_ at them.”

“Glare?” the kid says doubtfully.

“I’ve got the scariest glare this side of the Forbidden Wilds,” Erend says. “You didn’t know?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Oh yeah?” Erend’s had a lifetime of being big and scary, and he _adores_ this kid, so he swells into the most exaggerated, excessively scary persona he can physically manage.

“That’s not that scary,” Itamen tries to say, but he’s fighting a smile.

Erend ruffles his hair. “When this is over, you can coach me on how to get better, mm?”

Fire and spit, this kid makes his heart ache.

 

****

 

It’s late. It’s _past_ late. The wedding’s in two days. He should have been asleep hours ago, but he’s sitting in the command center, scrawling patrol plans in chalk on the wide wooden tables.

“Cap, we got the southern gate secured,” Tandin reports.

“Go home,” Erend says. “You’re done.”

“Nah, there’s still-”

“You’re _done_.” It hits him like an unexpected hammerfall. “You’re...done.”

“You said that,” Tandin says, annoyed. “Look, I know you’re as tired as the rest of us-”

“You’re done,” Erend repeats. “That’s it. That’s the Watchers. That’s what we’re saying.”

“Cap?”

But he’s already running.

 

****

 

Aloy jerks upright when he bursts through the door, as if she hasn’t nodded off amid pieces of machine. Her hair is a wild cloud around her head, a stray shard suspended from a wire caught in its midst. “It’s all,” she says. “I was just-”

“They’re done,” Erend says. “What if that’s what we’re telling them.”

She stares, the sleep gone from her body like vapor. “Erend, what are you saying?”

“The Watchers,” he says. “We’d thought it was _nothing_ \- we were telling them there’s nothing.”

“I’m listening.”

“The lure tells them there’s something there,” he says. “A task. Something to do.”

She nods.

“We thought the opposite was nothing - that there’s nothing there for them to do, but that doesn’t explain why the Watchers swarm.”

“Go on.”

“What if it’s not _nothing_ : what if instead, we’re telling them _the task is complete_.” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t think they’re dying. I think they’re shutting themselves down.”

“Shutting themselves down?” Realization dawns on her face. “Scrappers and Glinthawks go elsewhere because they think their scrap is reclaimed. Sawtooths go away because the threat has been mitigated.”

“Watchers scout, right?” Erend says. “They look for things. If we’re telling them there’s nothing else to look for, their purpose is over. That’s why they die. If we’re telling them they’re not needed, if we’re telling them there’s nothing left to scout, there’s nothing left for them.”

“That’s why they swarm,” Aloy breathes. “It’s like they almost don’t believe it.” She stands up, almost knocking over her chair in the process. “They see us. Some part of them _knows_ there’s something they should be doing, but we’re telling them there’s not, and they get confused.”

“That one asked to be pacified. Maybe it thought there was some other purpose-”

“It didn’t _ask_ -”

“You _saw_ it!”

“They don’t think. They’re machines. They’re programmed, and we’re a flaw. An aberration.” She shakes her head. “Okay. The Snapmaws: they purify the water. Maybe they get angry because they _know_ they’re not done - something in their programming or their sensors - even though we’re telling them they are.”

“Bellowbacks,” he says, scrubbing a hand across his face. “They carry. They know they’re full, so they _can’t_ be done, so they go around the signal. Striders…?”

“We’re just telling them their task is done in a specific spot. They move on.” She comes around the table. “Erend...I think you’re right.”

He’s caught in the weightless moment just before victory. “...if they’re done,” he says, clawing his way through, “HEPHAESTUS should be satisfied, right?”

“It should see the bauble as a sign of success,” Aloy says excitedly. “Not as a threat.”

Ersa was the clever one. She got them out. Erend is brute force and solid muscle, but he’s just thought of this, this idea that came to him from nothing. He’s holding it in his hands, outstretched to Aloy, and she’s eagerly accepting it and building from it.

He did this. He _thought_ of this.

Her hair blazes around her head, an uncontrolled halo of copper-bright. “HADES needed to be purged because its purpose was to remake the earth if GAIA failed,” she says, starting into an excited path around the apartment. “She didn’t fail; it was just activated by that rogue signal. If HEPHAESTUS can be convinced its job to protect its own is finished - if it can be convinced there’s no danger to defend against - maybe we can actually start to get GAIA rebuilt and bring the other subroutines back under control.”

“We don’t know where it is,” Erend says.

“We _will_ . We’ll find it, but until we do, the baubles will keep us safe. I just need to make- no, _Thunderjaw_ radar!” She’s tripping over her own words in flushed elation, and then she suddenly freezes in place. “The _Tallnecks!”_

“Can you _do_ that?” His heart shudders in his chest. “Is that even-”

“If we can tell them the task is done, maybe we can tell them there isn't a threat. We put that code into the Tallneck, and it'll broadcast it to the edge of its range-"

Aloy is heat and life and light, unstoppable force and terrifying intellect. She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and he loves her so much he can’t put it into words. She's chewing her own lip in eager thought, and all he can do is put his hands on her face and kiss her. She's more hope than he's ever seen, more  _everything_ that he could ever expect, and whatever she needs of him is hers. 

 

 


	63. Chapter 63

Sometimes, Erend feels his entire life is one long Charger ride: careening through jagged canyon to a lurching halt.

The wedding is like that.

It's two days, then one, and suddenly it's the night before. His body is moving on its own. He's been so stressed for so long, the notion that this might actually be happening doesn't feel real. It isn't over - the event itself will be followed by at least two weeks of pageantry, receptions and general mayhem - but there's no more time for preparation. Everything he's done will either be enough or it won't, and the outcome is just a roll of dice.

Erend’s been out of control and terrified. Now, he still doesn’t have control, but this time, there's a deep kind of calm. He’s done everything he can. Now, it’s up to fate.

He should sleep, because he doesn't know when he'll get another chance, but Aloy’s off checking the baubles, and he's buzzing with too much nervous energy.

In the past, he'd have reached for a drink, but in the past, he wouldn't have been able to accomplish everything he has. He still wants a drink, or he wants the taste of Aloy, but instead he settles for sitting on one of the benches at the command post, rubbing a last coat of oil into his gambeson. The quilted plating has been polished to a high gleam, every scratch and gouge highlighted with dark wax. There's a freshly laundered shirt and trousers prepared at home, his shaving kit sharpened and set out.

He’s proud of his men and he's so damn happy for Avad. The echo of Charming Oaf thrills to the celebration, and there’s a fiercely protective energy rushing in his blood.

More than anything, though, Erend  just wants it to be over. He's exhausted and ready to go back to a normal routine, of working hard and coming home to Aloy, to the little kernel of domestic life they've carved out and cobbled together.

He doesn't want to think about the baubles. They've changed everything, and he _knows_ normal is gone.

 _Marry me_ , he thinks. _Marry me, because I love you more than breathing and I'm terrified life is going to pull us apart. Marry me so we both know that no matter what happens, there's a home we can come back to._

 

****

 

It’s solstice, the longest day of the year. There are dense clouds slowly bubbling up from the horizon with the tantalizing possibility of rain, but the air is still achingly dry, the sun bearing down heavy and hot. There are so many people in the temple plaza, there isn’t even room for their shadows. Erend’s job is to stand around looking imposing, but not scary. It’s a role he knows well, so he hooks his thumbs behind his belly-plate and settles back.

He’s been sweating this event for _months_ , and now it’s here. He’s a little twitchy - there’s something he overlooked, some detail he missed, there _has_ to - but the guests are well-behaved and his Vanguard is resplendent.

Everything is an assault on his senses. The sun is climbing to its height and the Carja are a sea of vivid, shining silk and soft matte velvet. Yellow and red blaze over deep purples and blacks, rich embroidery glowing against the cloth, with inlaid machine plate polished to an impossible sheen. Perfume and scented oil mingles in the air with the musk of the dense, sweaty crowd.

When he sees her, Aloy eclipses them all.

He knows she’s Talanah’s Thrush, a member of the Hunters Lodge in her own right, but against the background of everything _else_ she is, he just _forgets._ This is a royal wedding and the entire Lodge is present, so of course she’s here.

Judging by the wariness on her face, he’d bet shards that Talanah cajoled her into coming. He’s only seen Aloy in fits and starts for weeks, and in the last two days, he hasn’t seen her at all, and _fuck_ , she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

There isn’t a set uniform for hunters of the Lodge, just a heavier variation on the usual blazon armor, and Aloy’s taken it to another level. At first glance, the silk seems almost too simple - the washed-out blue of an early-morning sky - but then she _moves,_ and the fabric shudders with gray like the malevolent glimmer of a distant Stalker. Dark Glinthawk feathers shine at her shoulders and the sharp points of her Lodge headpiece. Rost’s pendant is bright against her neck, the tiny pouch for her Focus glistening beneath. For the first time since the Embrace, her hair tumbles with an array of braids, bright pink, white and blue beads tucked amid the copper.

Pink-white-blue, the colors of the impossible screens in Zero Dawn. For anyone else, the outfit would look odd - she’s getting some confused looks from the nobles around her - but Erend knows it immediately: this is an echo of Elisabet Sobek, imagined as a Carja warrior.

He’s got his post and he should _stay_ there, but he’s elbowing his way through the crowd before he can stop himself, taking her face in his hands. “You aren’t her,” he whispers fiercely. “You _aren’t_.”

Her eyes glitter, but it’s not anger. It’s fondness, a light that’s warm and gentle. “Idiot.” She reaches up to gently tug at the hair on his jaw. “Do you know much Talanah spent on me? You’re supposed to tell me I look good.”

His throat closes up, a bubble of panic swelling in his chest. “Aloy, I’m _serious_ -”

“I love you,” she says. “Don’t make my choices for me.”

The gleam of the Glinthawk feathers brings out the gold in her eyes as the molten flow of her hair traces the proud line of her neck and shoulders. There’s bare skin at her belly and the thick knots of silk at her waist accentuate the sway of her hips as she walks. She’s traded the heavy blazon leggings for a lighter flared skirt, and Erend’s panic abruptly turns into a hard crush of heat.

“Better,” she says smugly. “That’s the reaction I wanted.”

“You look _amazing_ ,” he manages.

“Watch this!” Aloy grins, and fire and spit, she _twirls_ in place like a girl, the panels of her skirt blooming like a jungle flower. She steadies herself by bumping his shoulder with her own, leaning in for a conspiratorial whisper. “Erend, this is so pretty, I’m going to wear it every day for the rest of my _life_.”

“Well...tell me not the _whole_ day,” he drawls, making sure she sees the hungry drift of his eyes. There’s half a chance he’s getting hit and half a chance he’s getting kissed, and the fact that he wins the kiss, sweet and deep, feels as bright and rare as the day itself.

At noon, the Sun King and the Sunhawk of the Lodge claim their place in front of the High Priest, haloed in delicate metal and sweeping plate as the names of their ancestors rise around them. It’s a marriage of revolution and tradition, of humble leadership and unassailable strength, and underneath, a deep and undeniable joy.

Avad had once told Erend that a royal marriage was more negotiation than anything else, but the man who should have been his brother-in-law reads the terms in a voice that resonates with love.

It’s been twenty-seven months since Ersa died. There isn’t a day where Erend doesn’t miss her, but...seeing Avad with Talanah doesn’t feel like the betrayal it once did. If he’s honest with himself, this is better. Ersa wouldn’t ever have been Avad’s wife. Even if the politics allowed, she’d have refused, and Avad would have spent the rest of life torn between his lover and his kingdom.

Talanah is the opposite. She complements Avad. Together, they’re taking a broken past and forging it into righteous legacy.

Ersa was an integral part of the revolution. She was the anvil on which it formed. Erend hates that she’s dead, he _hates_ it, but...the older he gets, the further time takes him away from her, he starts to think that maybe, _maybe_ , this is okay. It will never be okay that she’s gone, but this way, her own legacy is clad in steel: she’s remembered as should be, a leader and a hero.

He tries to imagine his tough, stubborn sister standing with Avad amid this circle of scarlet-clad priests, holding out her hands for the gilded paint she’ll apply to her new husband’s face, and Erend’s _can’t_. He just can’t. It wasn’t her.

Even it was, it wouldn’t have been her.

It’s a solemn ceremony, but Avad’s lips twist in a pleased little grin as he draws the long stripes down Talanah’s face, and she bites the inside of her cheek as she returns the gesture.

This. _This_ is what Erend protects. The Carja guards have all of Meridian, but Erend has Avad’s little smile, Talanah’s steady hands, and Itamen’s precocious gravity as he stands at his brother's elbow. He has the old, winding stone hallways of the palace, the ornate gold railings and tall, fluted towers.

This is his family, just as much as Aloy. Once, Erend thought dying for a cause was the highest form of devotion, but when he looks at Avad and he looks at Aloy, he knows in his bones that the opposite is true. His job is to take the hits - and he’s _good_ at that - and if there’s a hit that ends up being too strong for him to take, well,  that’s for later. He’s a soldier, and he knows a soldier’s odds, and he’s mostly accepted that.

The highest form of devotion, he’s realizing, is doing his job so well that he _lives_. The highest form of devotion is to die old and fat and happy, the decades of his life a well-earned reward for his service. He’s been training his men for eight months for this single day, and in the process, he’s strengthened the palace defenses more than Ersa or anyone before ever had. His men aren’t drinking as much. They’re not exactly turning into scholars, but rudimentary written reports are starting to appear. Even with the introduction of the baubles and the dead Watchers, even with the influx of celebrants that the garrison commander assures him are the largest crowd to come to Meridian in _centuries_ : even with all of that, the chaos has been far less than he’s feared, and it’s because his men - and Erend himself - aren’t the meatheads they’ve been. Now, they’re willingly trained and well-prepared, and right now, they look damn good.

He’s proud. He’s so fucking _proud_.

The gold paint on Avad and Talanah’s faces will dry, cracking and falling away during the day’s festivities. It’s supposed to symbolize the way the sun burns away its devotees’ sins, but all Erend can think of is Aloy. He should be standing at attention, and he _is_ , but his eyes drift to her, hanging on the edge of the crowd. Her hair is a loose tumble of fire over her shoulders, the stormcloud silk falling from her hips like the distant edge of rain.

 _Marry me_ , he thinks, _but not like this._

He won’t subject her to the ealdormen. He would never ask her to go back to the Embrace. The Carja pageantry makes him cringe. He desperately wants to _be_ married; he just suddenly doesn’t know how to get there.

As if she _knows_ , she looks right at him, her eyes burning the way they had when she’d crossed the bridge after the Spire. He’d been half-dead - more than half, if he’s honest - and all he’d wanted was the simple knowledge that she was free.

He still wants that. He wants to stand beside her and ensure that she only goes where she wants to go.

_Marry me. Let me know it’s okay that I want to be by your side. Tell me you want me, and I’ll never go anywhere except with you._

Paint is exchanged. Red silk is twisted around willing hands and then unbound, coming away flecked with gold. The rope is cut and knotted, each half draped around a neck.

The ceremony is done. Talanah is now both Sunhawk of the Lodge and Queen Consort to the Sun King, and Avad outshines the sun itself.

 

****

 

The rest of the day is a blur of color and motion, but by the time the sky goes dark, the party’s settled into a steady, happy rumble. Erend stays in the palace’s main plaza until the pungent smell of spiced liquor rolls over him like a cloud, and the old, familiar howl in his blood starts to make itself known.

He makes himself wave at Tandin. “Take over. I need air.”

His third nods agreeably. “We’ve got it covered.”

Away from the crowd, the night air is dry and cool, a merciful, immediate relief. The balcony is strung with long rows of paper lanterns, red and yellow and orange bobbing in the breeze. Kip’s making a slow patrol beneath them. “Things good, Cap?”

“Party’s getting thick. Just checking around.”

There are knots of revelers laughing here and there, sitting by the fountains or strolling the halls. All of Meridian is outlined in light, the rooftops like constellations with the lazy vents twisting like distant stars.

“Garvehl’s on break,” Kip says. “He’ll be back soon, and I’ll relieve Lugen.”

“Good.” It’s seamless, just like they’ve drilled. “Keep up the good work.”

“Tonight, the more money you got, the less clothes you’re wearing.” Kip grins. “This isn’t work, Cap.”

Erend shakes his head. “Can you just avoid the married ones this time? I don’t want another irate wife storming into the command post.”

“Only man I’m going home with is Aggrid. My hunting days are over,” the Vanguardsman says cheerfully. He gives Erend a sly glance. “Last yelling lady was _yours-_ ”

“ _Enough_. Get back to it.” But he’s not mad, because Kip is right.

_Marry me. Marry me, and then the next time I do something stupid, you can be the irate wife storming through. We can have a huge row in front of everyone, and they’ll know you’re only mad because you love me._

One of these days, he’s actually going to _say_ it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full disclosure: this could be so much better, and I've completely lost track of the month-by-moth timeline and can't be bothered to go back and reconstruct. 
> 
> BUT. The perfect is the enemy of the good, and the ehhhh is good's second-in-command. Here's some ehhhh, because it's the best my brain's got this week. Better things are coming. 
> 
> You are all incredibly lovely, and I appreciate the fuck out of you.


	64. Chapter 64

He’s walking along the quiet balustrade when Aloy’s suddenly at his elbow.

“Hey,” she says.

“You look amazing,” Erend says, because she _does_. She’s brilliant and beautiful, a wild blaze of light and life. Her hair spills over her shoulders in a loose, molten wave, her eyes soft and warm as ore.

She comfortably tucks her hand under his elbow, and they stroll. Meridian is a sea of stars, lanterns bobbing in the breeze beneath the steady glimmer of the twisting vents.

They’re standing at the balcony when Kip drifts back over.

“Nothing new to report.” The Vanguardsman makes a sweeping gesture. “Hell of a spectacle, right? I mean, it’s the Carja, but still.” He pauses. “I gotta ask, Aloy...how do the Nora do it?”

Erend’s half-ready to punch, but Aloy’s face goes quiet and thoughtful, only the briefest shadow of pain. “Honestly, I don’t know.” She frowns. “I was really only Nora for a few minutes.”

“You’ve got _some_ idea.”

She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Sorry,” Kip says. “I didn’t mean it that way.” He absently clicks his metal fingers on the stone. “Oseram do it with jewelry.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

Kip nods, a sly grin creeping across his face, and Erend is suddenly very uncomfortable. “Something big, a hammered torque or some other polished monstrosity. If you’ve got skill, you make it yourself, or if you’ve got the shards, you pay someone else. You take it to your girl, hand it over, and if she likes it, she wears it to show all her friends how impressive a man she has.”

“That’s it,” Aloy says doubtfully.

“That’s it. Well, you give her a torque and then you go in front of the ealdormen and make your case. If they’re feeling good, they bless you. If not, you can either pay up or argue real hard, and maybe they’ll bless you then.” He leans back, the very picture of languid disinterest. “Not that you two’ll ever have to worry about that.”

“Enough,” Erend says. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

“Your hand,” Aloy interjects. Her lips twist. “Doesn’t that count as big and gaudy?”

“Hey, you _know_ I paid shards for this.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Just the materials.”

For once, _Kip_ goes a little pink and bashful. “...might.” He pushes himself to his feet. “Back to work.”

There’s a long, quiet moment as he walks away, and then Aloy looks at Erend and he looks back, and fire and spit, a cluster of childish giggles bubbles up in his chest.

“I did _not_ see that coming,” Erend manages.

“ _You_ didn’t,” Aloy says smugly. “ _I_ , on the other hand, have suddenly won a significant pile of shards.”

“You-” Of course she has. She’d known about the kissing bet - he’s sure she knew about the sex bet, too, but he’ll die before he asks - and he should absolutely not be surprised she’s involved in other sordid Vanguard prospecting.

She leans in. “If you’re nice, maybe I’ll share.”

 _I can be very nice_ , he means to say, but the pungent herbs in her hair are suddenly in his nose and swirling around his brain.

_Marry me-_

He could say it. He could say it _right now_. He wants to, he should just do it fire and _spit_ open your damn mouth _-_

The words stay swollen and trapped in his throat, and then he’s kissing her, drawing the steady, beloved scent of her into his lungs.

He could keep kissing her forever, but she pulls back, frowning. “What Kip said,” she says, the words a little too soft and measured. “Why wouldn’t we have to worry about the ealdormen?”

Fire and spit. “Eh, they’re just...stodgy.”

“I’m Nora,” she says bluntly. “You could just say it.”

“I _won’t_.” In a perfect world, he’d take her hand and they’d walk confidently into the middle of Mainspring. He’d announce his intentions, and she’d stand tall and gorgeous beside him. The ealdormen would take one look at the two of them together, and not a single objection would be raised.

This isn’t a perfect world. That fact has been beaten into him from the day he was born. Even if he somehow manages to open his mouth, if Aloy accepted, and even if she did, there’s no way to know if she’d be willing to go to the Claim.

If, if, if. He already knows the ealdormen won’t accept her no matter how hard either of them argue.

He won’t even try. His list of grievances with the ealdormen start with his father, and are written in thick clots of his sister’s blood. “They’re all bungs,” Erend says, crossing his arms against the swell of fury in his chest. “They wouldn’t follow Ersa. Any blessing they’d give isn’t worth the shit on their boots.”

She swallows. “...if it weren’t?”

“It won’t.” He shakes his head. “You think I’d be this long out of the Claim is there was anything good back there?”

She regards him with a steady quiet. “You’re still here.”

“Nowhere else I want to be,” he says honestly. “I mean. You _did_ look in a mirror, right?”

She punches his shoulder, but there’s a grin on her face, and if he got hit in the head by a Thunderjaw at this moment, he wouldn’t even notice.

 _Marry me_ , he almost says. _Marry me, because wherever you are is the only place I ever want to be, and every blessing from the ealdormen means nothing._

 

****

 

The actual exchange of vows is only the start. It kicks off a solid two weeks of straight-up partying, and Erend forgets what it means to sleep. The schedule he’s honed for months is suddenly very real, and he and his men are catapulted through it like bombs from an Oseram cannon.

His men are the best. There’s a seamless six-on-six-off schedule, and despite the entire city roiling with joy, absolutely no one shows up drunk. A little tipsy, more than a little hungover, but not _drunk_. Everyone’s in uniform - their _entire_ uniform - and any arguments are kept to a bare minimum. If there’s a fight, it’s only because the Vanguard is wading in to end it.

 _Look at what we’re doing, Ersa_ , Erend says to the ghost in his head as he walks in the early morning mist. _You should be here. You should be seeing this._

She doesn’t answer. She hasn’t in a very, very long time.

It’s exhausting. Aloy brews a weak tea of thaw omen, and he _hates_ it, but by the second week, it’s becoming necessary. He tries it first - he _trusts_ Aloy, but the plant has a deadly twin, and he remembers holding her up as she puked - but thankfully, all he feels is jittery and awake. He hands it out to his men in sparing doses, and the only complaints are about the taste.

He doesn’t see Aloy. He’s barely been home. When he can’t be upright any longer, he falls face-first into one of the barracks beds and passes out until Tandin or Adar shakes him awake for shift change.

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t enjoying it, just a little. He’d overseen the Oseram cannons that pounded Meridian’s walls during the revolution, and then he’d spent the next few years floating in a drunk oblivion. He remembers the Spire and the long months of recovery in its wake, but he’s never seen his city this _happy_. There’s a raucous joy that echoes from every stone and cobble, color flooding the streets like brilliant mist.

He understands. He walks the palace halls, a steady presence of law and order suffused with ambient bliss, and thinks about the moment he realized he loved Aloy. He hadn’t been ready for her - neither of them had been ready - but it happened anyway, as unexpected as a Watcher’s bright flare.

Of all the things he’s never expected, he’s never expected Aloy. Not to meet her, not to love her, not to be the unworthy recipient of her soft, quiet smile as he lays her back amid the pillows. He never expected to be taken into places from the Metal World, to have the deepest secrets of the past offered up in her palms like Talanah’s golden paint.

He catches her in the hallway, going the other direction with an armful of power cells and Glinthawk feathers. She lets him catch her face in his hands, her mouth opening under his. There’s a blob of grease under her left eye, but when he tries to wipe it away, it just smears across her cheek in a blurry black line.

He thinks of Talanah, of Avad’s fingers tracing confident, shimmering lines.

“Aloy...” He’s going to say it. His heart is firm in his chest, the words strong and ready on his tongue. “Aloy, there’s something I-”

At that moment, one of the power cells slips free and Aloy dances quickly, breaking its fall with the top of her foot so it rolls easily to the ground, intact. Balancing the others, she retrieves it, shuffling her load for a better grip. “I should go before I drop all of these,” she says, and cocks her head. “Are you coming home tonight?”

 _Marry me, because I’m always going to come home to you._ “I’ll try.” Lugan’s sleeping off a decent hit from the bar fight he’d defused last night, and Erend’s covering his patrol. “It’s just…”

“Busy,” Aloy agrees. She darts in to kiss his cheek and then steps back, assessing him with an affectionate gaze. “At least _try_ to get some rest, idiot. I love you.”

“I love you,” he says automatically, because she’s already walking away with a wink.

Fire and spit, she’s the most frustrating person he’s ever met, and he’s absolutely, helplessly in love with her.

****

 

One day, the earlier breeze picks up to actual wind, sweeping clouds up in its path. It’s not even midafternoon when the sky goes dark, and suddenly, the rain comes pouring down, almost as if the earth is bestowing its greatest gift to Avad and his bride.

Clay soil swells, ochre-brown mud clinging as moisture gives it life. Banners snap in the wind. Celebrants dance into the downpour, heedless of their finery.

Once, Erend stood on the Alight in the shadow of the Spire, waiting for a clarity the world couldn’t give him. Grieving and painfully sober, he’d laid down on sodden earth that would eventually be torn by HADES’s machines, and he’d tried to drown. Now, he’s so tired he’s shaking, but his feet are solidly on the ground as he lifts his face to the sky.

 

****

 

The wedding is _finally_ over. There’s one last, enormous party, and then huge fireworks light Meridian in glorious red and orange.

Erend forgot about the fireworks.

Aloy shoulders her way through the crowd to squeeze his hand. The rough bite of cordite and smoke is thick in the air, the explosions booming off the stone - _he’s curled around her body bleeding and bleeding not like this it wasn’t supposed to be like this_ \- but if he concentrates on the warmth of her skin, the pressure of her fingers against his, he can almost-

“You okay?” she asks, leaning in so he can hear her voice beneath the chaos.

She’s here. She’s right here and she’s alive, the wild blaze of her hair glowing with each flash in the sky. He’s wrapped in the scent of her hair, the wild ends tickling his nose and mouth-

He doesn’t realize he’s shaking until she pulls him down to peer into his eyes with grave concern. “Erend,” she says quietly. “Are you here?”

He is, or at least, he thinks he _could_ be, but he’s so fucking _tired_ and any resistance he might have had is lost in the white howl of his brain.

“Things good?” he hears Tandin ask.

“We’re taking a walk,” Aloy says.

He can’t be around alcohol, and he’s paralyzed right now. He can’t even breathe, he’s _useless-_

Tandin’s already agreeing. “Need backup?”

“I think we’ll be fine,” she says.

The next thing he knows, she’s got him tucked into a shadowy corner at the far end of the palace, a banner-filled niche sheltered by a lush, decades-old fern. He can hear the fireworks more than he can feel them, but it’s still enough that his lungs clench with every retort.

She’s standing nearby, a cup of water in her hands. “Drink.”

He does, carefully setting the empty cup on the edge of the planter. Erend sags against the wall, his heartbeat still a sick shudder in his chest. “I, uh. Should have probably seen that coming.”

He’s been so vigilant about everything except himself.

Aloy steps in and wraps her arms around him, and he’s so shaky that all he can do is lean into her, his limbs distant and disconnected. She’s wearing her Thrush dress, and the silk is slippery under his hands, the curves of her body as familiar as his own breath. “I love you,” she says quietly.

Her fingers twine into the hair at his jaw, and _oh-_

She’s so _gorgeous_. He suddenly feels like he hasn’t touched her in _years_. Now, here she is, alive, she’s _alive,_ and he’s desperate to crawl into her heat and forget everything except the taste of her mouth-

Her hands fist aggressively in his scarf, and she jerks him back against the wall.

There’s a fumble of clothes and skin, soft Carja silk and heavy Oseram leather. Her belly is deliciously exposed, but it’s not as much as he needs, and he shoves the silk up and over her moon-pale breasts. She kicks the panels of his gambeson aside, grinding up against his hips, and _fuck_ , every single thing he’s wearing is unbearably tight.

Some tiny spark of reason flares in the back of his mind. “Someone’s gonna-” he manages, “hear us.”

Her breath is hot in his ear. “Then be quiet.”

Quiet is _so_ not going to happen.

She expertly slips the tie of his waistband and he falls free, the night air cool on burning skin. He feels painfully exposed, but not because of anyone who might walk past. He’s _starving_ , desperate for her heat, the hot slick of her body clenched around his.

There’s a thick series of loud pops, and _gunfire Ravagers bleeding scars_ -

He doesn’t even have time to choke. She grips the back of his neck, and everything else disappears. “Focus,” she growls.

Erend's brute force. He's solid muscle, and that means when the musk of her sweat brings him crashing back into himself, he can lift up the woman he loves and pin her body against the wall. She sucks the breath from his lungs, her legs curling around his waist as she draws him in, so impatient that he almost loses himself right then.

“I love you,” he gasps, and then they're sliding together, raw and messy.

He wants devour her fast and hard, and he wants to hold ice in his mind and make this last forever-

She bites down on his lip, a bright spark of pain.

Fast and hard it is.

He’s lost in the curve of her neck when a particularly loud explosion shakes the stone around him, and he stops breathing for an entirely different reason. Aloy abruptly sinks her fingernails into the back of his head, taking short, quick breaths against his jaw. “Focus on _me_ , damn you.”

He can’t, he _can’t_ , not like this, not when she’s between him and the wall _shrapnel slicing through-_

“Me, Erend,” she growls. “ _Now_.”

His brain sparking, he obediently thrusts, and is rewarded with his own name, drawn-out and filthy.

He doesn’t know how long they last. His entire consciousness is narrowed to the blistering point their bodies meet. “Be _here_ ,” she hisses when he stutters again, trapped between her and shrieking instinct.

Her hair is clawing at his eyes, the smell of her raging through his blood. She’s light and light and heat, and she’s alive, she’s so blazingly _alive_ , and the frantic need to shove her into cover violently wars with the need to be consumed.

“ _Focus_! Say something, _anything-_ ”

The only thing in his mouth is her name, over and over again.

When he loses himself, he can’t quite stifle the animal roar that tears itself from his throat. The world spins around him, a dizzying whirl of colored lights and inky shadow. She's right there with him, clenching and shuddering and gloriously soaked. Boneless, they awkwardly slide down the wall to the ground, a tangle of limbs and sweat and the bright linen banner they’ve somehow brought down with them.

In the distance, the firework show reach its deafening conclusion, but Erend is a boulder in a river, the sound washing up and over him. He’s never been so exhausted, or so grateful for the steady weight of Aloy's body against his own.

She presses her forehead against his, her eyes gleaming copper ore in the shadows. “Remember this,” she whispers. “Whatever’s in your head about Spire - make it _this_.”

_Oh._

He can’t promise that, not even to her. He must make some small noise in his throat, because she tugs gently at the hair at his jaw. “Do you know how often you crush me in your sleep?” she asks. “ _Trust_ me, this is for both of us.”

“Why do you save me?” The words come out almost plaintive. He doesn’t deserve her. She’s an impossible flare, too enthralling to look away; he’s a battlebroken soldier, tied to a city that is too small to contain everything she is. She saves him without even trying, in a way that’s as natural as breathing, and he can only drift after her the way he always has, dazed and besotted and utterly lost in the sway of her hips. “Every time, Aloy, you-”

“Idiot,” she murmurs against his neck, her fingers twisted in his hair. “Maybe it's because I love you.”


	65. Chapter 65

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers for Frozen Wilds!
> 
> Also, it's been awhile since I updated the tags. Anything specific I should add?

The guests are hungover, and finally - _finally -_ they’re leaving.

Erend is _exhausted_. He doesn’t dare cut patrols entirely, not when the tent city is slowly emptying and no one knows how long the baubles will last, but he staggers them so he’s got a third less men on duty at any given time.

No one complains.

He’s still working the hardest of any of them - he’s the captain, so of course he is - but he finds himself with as many as eight uninterrupted hours at a time. He mostly spends it sleeping, Aloy tucked beside him with an arm slung across his chest or a leg hooked around his calf. There’s a delicious amount of sleepy lovemaking, slow and languid, and more than once one of them falls asleep halfway through.

 _Marry me_ , he thinks, fondly trailing his fingers through her hair. She’s passed out cold on his chest as he slowly relaxes inside her sleepy hand, unspent but profoundly fulfilled. _I will never love you less than I do at this moment, and I love you so much there will never words to describe it._

 

****

 

Marad is a constant presence at the palace. There are many things about the spymaster that Erend finds deeply unsettling: at times, he seems completely normal, but then there’s a subtle shift from the corner of Erend’s vision, and Erend continues to doubt. Marad knows everything, and remembers even more. Erend doesn’t know if the contents of Marad’s memory are his own or just recorded secondhand, but the capacity is precise and endless. It’s not _natural._

On the other hand, Aloy - a voracious and infinite sink for information herself - seems to _love_ him. Erend reports to Avad after walking the walls, and in the rare moments she’s not up to her elbows in machine parts, Aloy is invariably standing on a far balcony with Marad, well out of earshot and engaged in deep conversation.

It’s been two weeks since the wedding celebration ended, and Erend’s finally starting breathe. His men are settling into their new patrols, extended from the palace and the city to include periodic inspection of the baubles. Eddic is still helping the scholar Ronnamet’s take account of the dead Watchers; the machines still cluster in fatal halos around the baubles, but Ronnamet assures Erend that the numbers are slowly decreasing.

He doesn’t know what that means, but he knows what kind of luck he has, and he’s pretty sure it’s not good.

In terms of the baubles themselves, Aloy’s increasingly prickly, rebuffing his help in favor of pacing around muttering about panel efficiency and power cells. He thinks she might be worried about the inexplicable Watcher deaths, and there still aren’t any answers. More than that, she’s run out of Scrapper radars, and they’ve had more than one argument about hunting for more.

The worst part is that neither of them have a specific side. There are days she’s confident she can improve the baubles she’s already made, and she explodes at the barest mention that more might be needed. By the next afternoon, she’s disappeared with her longbow for hours, coming back guilty and resentful, dragging a pack of Scrapper parts behind her.

If she needs the parts, he wants her to have them, but there are hunters already in the jungle who would be happy to trade. Avad said Aloy had the full support of the Sundom; Erend just wants her to _use_ it.

Then, a bauble fails.

For the wedding, Erend had a Vanguardsman, a Carja guard and a runner stationed at each bauble, but he’s scaled it down to a patrol that checks every few hours. No one sees this one die; the patrol at dusk reported nothing unusual, but at midnight, a runner comes pounding on the apartment door. Aloy grabs her spear and hunting kit, Erend stumbling on her heels with his axe.

Snapmaws swarm the river shore, their eyes gone red and angry. They’re so agitated that Aloy can’t sneak across, and even with Garvehl, Lugan and four Carja guards, the fight is brutal. When it’s over, one guard and seven Snapmaws are dead, Garvehl’s half-frozen, and Erend’s bleeding profusely from a stray claw.

Back in the apartment, Erend sits on the stairs, winding a bandage around his calf. The slash is wide, but mercifully shallow and already clotting. Aloy’s on the floor with her head between her knees, her breathing short and hitched. She’s still in her heavy leathers, her hair damp with icemelt. The failed bauble rests between her feet, the long antennae broken and askew. There are two large punctures at its base, each exactly the size of a Snapmaw tooth.

He wants to say something. He wants to help her suss out what happened, but she’s radiating frustration, and he doesn’t dare come close.

Eventually, she comes to bed, stiff and silent by his side. He rolls over to curl around her. “You okay?” he asks quietly.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with it,” she whispers. “He _died_ , and I can’t even see what’s wrong with it-”

“We’ll figure it out,” he says. “We will.”

 

****

 

In the daylight, the questions only mount. It’s very clear a Snapmaw bit the damn thing, but it’s impossible to tell if that was before or after it lost power. The power cell itself is shattered, the device’s heart crushed. Whatever internal information it might have held has been irreparably lost.

“Nothing,” Aloy says dully. “I can’t salvage any of it.”

She checks the other baubles obsessively. They seem to be working just fine, but she swaps out power cells and wires up Glinthawk feathers anyway. “They’re photovoltaic panels,” she says. “They’ll keep the cells topped up.”

From her tone, Erend can tell she doesn’t quite believe it.

She doesn’t sleep for three days. The Vanguard is scrambled, the college of scholars roused to a fever pitch with Aloy at the forefront. Erend thought the apartment was full of machine parts before, but he’s starting to genuinely worry the piles will attract Scrappers.

A few Scrappers might help, actually.

Each bauble is dependent on a Scrapper radar to send its signal. Aloy is desperately trying to use dead Watchers and the salvaged Snapmaws, but it’s not working at all. Erend’s running double patrols, coming home long after dark only to find her still awake, blearily slumped over mismatched Watcher hearts. The air smells like lightning and scorched flesh, her fingers bleeding from sparker burns.

He pulls up a chair and gently takes her hands in his, smoothing freeze rime over blistered skin. “I can do it,” she croaks, dropping her head against his shoulder. “There’s a way. There _has_ to be-”

“It was just one,” he says. “The others are fine.”

He knows it’s the wrong thing to say even before it leaves his mouth. She shoves him away and pointedly spends the night on the couch.

 

****

 

It hasn’t even been a week when the next runner comes. Just after noon, one of the short, dense showers erupts, a flood of water sluicing off the rooftops and into Meridian’s cisterns, and the girl who comes the door is drenched to the skin.

Erend’s been home for less than half an hour, and he’s only there to make sure Aloy actually eats something. She pushes away the husk-wrapped corn cake, her face going gray. “Another one?”

“No, ma’am,” the girl says. “His Radiance requests your presence. He said there’s news you should know.”

It’s not another failed bauble. It doesn’t even have to do with the baubles at all. It’s a Banuk woman, standing with Avad and Marad. She’s dressed for hard travel, the blue and yellow paint on her face dusty and worn.

“This is Yariki,” Marad says. “One of our envoys from Ban-Ur.”

“Huntress,” the Banuk says in greeting. “Your song has traveled far. It is an honor to meet you.” She neatly folds her hands in front of her, looking solemnly at Aloy. “Your reputation is such that I asked to speak with you immediately.”

Aloy frowns. “What’s going on?”

Yariki comes from a place called the Cut. Erend knows it, but only by reputation. The Banuk lands are even more fierce and harsh than the Claim, and from what he’s been told, the Cut is even worse. Now, there’s a new sort of Derangement that’s taken hold, dark and insidious, bringing with it stronger, more aggressive machines.

The Banuk as a whole are unflappable, and Yariki’s voice shakes as she relays the information. If someone from the _Cut_ is afraid, the rest of the world should be _terrified_ , but Erend knows exactly where this is going even as the words leave the envoy’s mouth.

He wants absolutely nothing to do with this, but Aloy’s already charging ahead. “A Corrupter brought machines under its control by direct contact,” she says. “What you’re describing...it sounds like a version of our bauble.”

Yariki nods. “Machines within its cloud of influence become especially aggressive. Some cannot be killed.”

Fire and spit, he knows _exactly_ where this is going, and he knows his opinion is utterly useless. He went with Aloy to the Embrace and the fact that they’re not dead is nothing but sheer, stupid luck; he doesn’t get a third chance. No one does. There’s no way that she’ll let him come with her, and Erend will be _damned_ if she goes alone.

It’s going to be the biggest argument they’ve ever had. He can already feel it brewing, and the worst part is that _she_ does too, because her spine goes tall and stiff and her questions to Yariki take on a dangerously even tone.

“Equip yourself as you need, Aloy,” Avad finally says. “Speak with the quartermaster.” He turns to Erend. “That goes for you, as well. Is your kit sufficient?”

The answer’s in the question. It has to be, but the steady hum of Aloy’s presence has been abruptly, violently consumed by the wild howl of her impending departure. She’s leaving. She has to, because of course she does. This is who she is. This is who they both are. He has to stay, because the Cut is on the far end of the Embrace, three weeks of hard travel even if weather and machines don’t intercede. Even if the wedding is over, there’s no way Erend can spare an entire season away from Meridian. He _can’t_.

 _Marry me_ , he thinks wildly. _We have to do it now, because if you don’t come back, I need you to know. I need you to carry how much I love you tucked in your heart-_

Aloy jerks upright as if slapped. “ _No-_ ”

“Unless you have no confidence in Adar and Tandin?” Avad says, ignoring her.

 _Oh_.

Erend’s a soldier, and he knows how to answer when his entire body is in full revolt. “No, they’re good.” He wants to say that his men are good, but they’re _tired_. He wants to say that he needs to go with Aloy more than anything he’s ever needed, but his duty is to his king and his city and his men-

“He’s _not_ coming,” Aloy interjects hotly. “Not after what happened-”

“This is not a request,” Avad says. He turns back to Erend. “Forgive me, but there’s no one I trust more.”

Erend’s already nodding, relief flooding his body like water.

“The baubles,” Aloy tries. “Someone-”

“Ronnamet has the plans,” Erend says. “There are a dozen tinkers in this city that could make one better than I could.”

“That’s not the _point-_ ”

“If you go, you will not go alone,” Avad says sternly. It’s the tone of a king who will not suffer any argument. “I would remind you that you owe me, Aloy.”

She bares her teeth, trapped, and then storms off.

One of these days, Erend thinks, there’s going to be a conversation that doesn’t end in frank mutiny.  

 

****

 

Aloy is a raging wildfire. She willfully disregards rank and status, bludgeoning her way past any kind of rule or custom only to be infuriated by the consequence. She chafes against civilization even when she’s trying to embrace it. She hasn’t slept in a handful of days, and right now, she’s dissolved into pre-Spire Aloy, blistering and furious.

“You’re _not_ coming,” she growls when he finally catches her. It’s a break between storms, the sunset glowing in purple clouds, and she’s splashing determinedly through the puddles in the direction of home. “Don’t you dare.”

He’s very concerned that she’s just going to grab her gear and leave. “Like hell I’m not.”

“This isn’t your responsibility-”

“It _is_.” He’s been elbowing his way into her world from the moment he met her. She’d finally relented in Brightmarket, setting her Focus on the table between them to explain something that he shouldn’t have believed, and ever since, they’ve been drawn together like wire twisting on a spool. “It is, and you know it.”

“ _This_ isn’t for you. I’m faster alone-”

He jogs a little to keep up. “Faster? Yeah.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“It’s me saying you’re fast,” he retorts.

“Faster, but…?”

She wants a fight. She wants it so badly that she all but kicks the apartment door in, and he’s frustrated enough that he’s going to let her have one. “Faster,” he snaps. “Faster and sneaky as hell, but you need backup for this. You need muscle, and that’s me.”

“I didn’t have backup before!”

“Because you wouldn’t _let_ me!” The door slams behind him so forcefully that a stack of Watcher claws abruptly clatters apart.

“There wasn’t time!” She grabs her quiver and starts thumbing through arrows.

“Well, there’s time now.” He folds his arms. It’s going to take a full day to assemble a proper travelling kit, and she damn well knows it. Anything she’s doing now is just for infuriating show, and _fuck_ , it’s working. “Avad told me to go, so I’m going. You don’t make that choice for me.”

“ _You_ don’t get to choose whether or not I travel alone!”

“Did you hear _anything_ that Banuk woman said?”

“I did.” She angrily checks her potions belt. “That’s exactly why you’re _not_ going.”

“Do you know anything about the Cut?”

“No.” This, defensively.

“Fire and spit, Aloy. You need backup for this, and that’s me.”

She stops, the muscle quivers at her temple. “...you’re going to _die_ ,” she grinds out, and the words are struck from grief just as much as steel.

“We’re _all_ going to die,” he retorts, “and if I get to choose where and how, that’s up to me. My decision. Mine.”

“I already _watched_ you-”

“How many times have I watched _you?_ ” he snaps. “Why do you think I want to go, Aloy?” _Marry me marry me, say it, just fucking say it-_ “If I hadn’t been there, you’d never have left the Embrace. If we hadn’t had your back at the Spire, the entire fucking world would have been lost! They cast you out, but _dammit_ , Aloy, that doesn’t mean you’re _alone_.”

She’s breathing hitched and hard, her entire body one tight, clotted wound, and then out of nowhere, she snatches a piece of machine plate and hurls it against the wall. It explodes in a burst of brittle shards.

Immediately, everything is silent and frozen, all fury utterly gone.

She speaks first, a horrified, strangled, “ _No._ ” Her hands jerk up to make fists in her hair. “I didn’t- _fuck_ , Erend, I’m so sorry-”

He’s ten years old, and most of his scars started like this, in shattering violence and broken ceramic. It’s Aloy standing mortified in front of him - _Aloy_ , life and light and heat and above all, _safety_ \- but Erend’s still a big kid with an angry father and nowhere to hide.

Everything goes blank, the memory of panic shrilling in his ears. He feels himself stagger toward the door, feels himself twist past Aloy as she reaches out in supplication. This time, he can run, and he does.

 

****

 

Animals go to ground. Erend doesn’t know where he's headed until he finds himself up on the watchtower. Shaking legs give out, and he slides down the wall to the ground, letting his head fall back against the stone. The air is thick and damp, pressing into shuddering lungs and forcing them into a steadier rhythm.

When he can breathe again, he scrubs a hand over his face. It’s dusk, bloody clouds stacked against the horizon, and the entire world feels bruised and raw. There’s a new type of Derangement in the Cut; Aloy is compelled to investigate, and Erend is compelled to follow. He didn’t ask to be caught by her flame, but he’s here nonetheless, tangled up in her in ways that can’t be unbound, even if he wanted them to be.

There’s a deep, tired anger curdled in his chest. The Carja say that you can fight the dawn, but dawn always wins. Aloy might be blinding, brilliant light, but right now, Erend absolutely intends to be the sun.

He heaves himself to his feet and heads to the command post. It’s Tandin’s watch, and he’s making small, deliberate checkmarks in the ledger newly dedicated for weapons inventory. “Hey, Cap,” Tandin says in greeting. “We lost more than a few light spears breaking up bar fights. I’m requisitioning more.”

When Ersa died, the Vanguard captaincy fell on Erend’s unprepared, incompetent shoulders. He hadn’t had any kind of rapport with Adar, and the entire Vanguard suffered for it. It’s been almost a year since Tandin became the official third, and after the initial hesitation wore off, he’s been nothing but cheerful and solid. He and Adar work together like a steady pair of hands, a firm, easy balance. Erend’s going to the Cut, and if he dies there, Adar will assume leadership of the Vanguard with Tandin as his second. They already had good practice while Erend was in the Embrace, and he knows they have Avad’s complete trust.

He thinks Kip would be a good third, but at that point, it won’t be Erend’s choice to make. He's fine with that. There's a continuity to the world that wasn't there before, and something eases a little between his lungs. 

“Get Adar,” Erend says quietly. “We need to talk.”


	66. Chapter 66

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI - going on a medical hiatus for the next three weeks or so. I've got the next couple of chapters decently fleshed out, but while I can't promise I'll actually get them posted, I _can_ promise that I haven't abandoned you.

“So,” Tandin says, when Erend’s done explaining. “The Cut.”

“When do you leave?” Adar asks. There’s no rancor, just a frank, honest question.

“As soon as we can,” Erend says, and then because it's true: “If she hasn’t left already.”

He doesn’t trust that she won’t throw what she has into her pack and then try and find the rest on the road. It was exactly what she’d wanted to do after the Spire. She’s a marvel at scavenging and survival, and right now, he needs all of his wits to stay ahead of her. He's not with her at this second, and that's all the time she needs to disappear.

He's seen her disappear in plain sight.

“I’ll scramble kit,” Tandin says immediately. “What gate?”

“North.” He’ll have to swing back by the apartment for his axe and the rest of his heavy armor. Even if he has to catch her, he doesn’t dare skimp. Not for the Cut. He takes a breath. “Look, I don’t know how long we’ll be gone.”

“I was in the Cut once,” Adar says, his tone bland. His dark eyes come up to pierce Erend. “You understand the weight of this?”

He should laugh. He should make the muscles of his lungs move, because they’re turning to solid blocks of steel from the pressure. If he doesn't laugh, he's going to scream, and he’s never going to stop. The Banuk envoy was afraid of what’s in the Cut. A _Banuk._ Whatever’s out there, it's the height of insanity for Erend and Aloy to go _looking_ for it.

Adar’s regarding him steadily. Erend isn't where he was after Ersa. He'd been flailing, as utterly obliterated as the ruins of GAIA Prime in the Grave Hoard. Now, he’s just...angry. Scared, but fiercely determined. There’s a new Derangement, aggressive and deadly, and if it’s going to be met, he’s damn well going to be at the front of the line.

“Where do they put the Vanguard?” Erend sets his jaw. “This isn’t just for her. This is for everything.”

For the first time, he sees not only approval, but _solidarity_ in Adar’s eyes, and his second nods once. “We’ll meet you at the north gate, Captain. Go.”

 

****

 

She isn’t at the apartment when he goes back. Neither are her things, or the last bauble she’s constructed.

He _hates_ being right.

He just really, really hopes he hasn't missed her.

 

****

 

He’s standing at the main gate in full travel gear, exchanging a last few notes with Tandin and Adar when Eddic cheerfully calls out, “Bye, Aloy! Have a good trip!”

It stops her in her tracks, but Erend’s so angry that that he can’t be even a little bit pleased at her shock. She takes one step backward. “ _No_.”

“Best of luck, Captain,” Adar says, grasping Erend’s hand. “We’ll be waiting.”

“I’m taking your stuff if you die,” Tandin adds.

“ _Not_ going to die,” Erend retorts, but the Vanguardsmen are already heading back toward the gate.

He makes himself take a hard breath before he looks at Aloy, trying to inject as much calm into his tone as he can. “It’s really thoughtful of you to sneak off.”

She scowls. “You’re _not_ coming.”

“I’m here. Let’s go.”

“I said _no_.” She reaches out to shove his shoulder, and he grabs her wrist.

“Tell me it wasn’t deliberate,” he says, and his throat is suddenly so tight with rage he almost can’t even speak. “Tell me right now, Aloy.”

“Of course it was deliberate,” she snaps. “I’m faster alone-”

“I’m not talking about the sneaking.”

There’s a beat of confusion. “I don’t-” Her eyes go wide. “ _No_ ,” she chokes out. “No, Erend, I’m so sorry, I would _never_ -”

“Because if that was deliberate, this trip is going to be hell of a lot worse for both of us.”

“I-”

“What am I supposed to _think_ , Aloy?”

She jerks her hand away. “I told you, I didn’t mean to!”

“But you still left.”

“It was an opportunity-”

“Do you even _understand_ -” He makes himself take a deep breath. “ _You_ , Aloy. Out of everyone else in this entire fucking _world,_ I can’t handle it from you.” Shattering plate echoes through his head and he’s shaking so hard he almost can’t talk. Distantly, he’s glad the Vanguard are out of earshot, because he’s about three heartbeats from completely losing it. “You are the _one person_ who’s safe. The only one. _Please_ tell me you understand what that means.”

“Erend…” She presses a palm to the bridge of her nose. “Fuck, I _know_ \- I shouldn’t have done that. I just- and then you _left_ -”

“I’m here,” he says flatly. “And if you tried to scare me off-”

“It’s not about _you_ ,” she says savagely. “That was an accident, and I’m sorry, I’m so _fucking_ sorry, but you can’t come with me for this. Maybe you know the Cut, but _I_ know the Derangement-”

This can’t possibly be about the Derangement. Not when she’s been grudgingly letting him take the hits while they’re testing the baubles. Not when she took him inside Zero Dawn. “Is this about the Embrace? Because the only way we made it was because we were _together,_ Aloy.”

There’s a long pause, and he can _see_ the clenched anger suddenly start to drop away, a cannonball reaching its apex and starting its involuntary descent back to earth. “It was an accident,” she repeats tiredly. “Believe me or don’t. If you’re coming, then let’s just fucking leave, okay?”

He’s not ready to let it go, not when he’s biting back a scream that he knows isn’t at _her_ , but it’s starting to rain again. “Fine,” he says. “Just- fine. Let’s go.”

 

****

 

The argument isn’t over. She’s still furious with him and he’s furious right back. She pacifies them both Chargers, and they ride in resentful silence. It pours, and by the time the sky finally lightens, they’re both soaked to the skin.

It’s still hours to Day’s Height, even at their current breakneck speed, but Aloy clearly has no intent to stop. It’s been a full day and a half since either of them slept, and he can _see_ her nodding. He kicks his mount and swings around, making her skid to a stop. “We’re camping here.”

She bares her teeth. “Don’t-”

“Will you just fucking sleep?” he snaps, and is rewarded with a scowl.

Their bedrolls are sodden and so is everything else. The jungle swelters, the desert a tantalizing glow in the distance. It would be so easy to just keep riding, but there are a lot of machines between here and there, and even with the bauble’s protective influence, it would only take one moment of inattention to kill them both. Instead, there’s damp loam and dripping leaves, and Erend sternly reminds himself that when he’s in the Cut, he’s going to _dream_ of heat like this.

It doesn’t help.  

“Don’t you dare leave without me,” he says as they hunker down in a patch of tall grass that is only slightly drier than anywhere else.

She rolls her eyes. “Don’t tempt me.”

He also reminds himself that he loves her.

 

****

 

They blow past Day’s Height without sparing a sideways glance. Aloy has the bauble lashed to the rump of her Charger, and it’s broadcasting at maximum power. Being pacified seems to override the bauble’s influence, so the Chargers still obediently kick into a gallop, but any other machines draw themselves away, annoyed and wary.

The rain follows them into the Gatelands, as dense and angry as the air between them. The Chargers get bogged down, mired in dust that has no idea what to do with water, and when he and Aloy try to dig them out, they just end up covered in red mud as well. Erend is filthy and exhausted, and pissed off at everything: the rain, the mud, having to ride, and having to endure Aloy’s clawing silence.

If he thought there was a drink within walking distance, he’d slug it down right now without any hesitation or regret.

There are Stormbirds circling overhead and Glinthawks chattering in the cliffs. Even with the bauble, Aloy’s slowed to a steady trot, and they carefully wind their way through the buttes, heading back toward the river. They skirt a herd of Behemoths, even though she stops to scan them with her Focus. “I need those power cells,” she mutters. “I don’t know how long I can keep this bauble lit.”

“Let’s do it,” Erend says gamely. It’s the most she’s spoken in hours, and he’s absolutely ready to get trampled half to death. If nothing else, he really, really wants to hit something.

“Five of them?” She shoots him a sour look. “You’re not that good.”

“ _We_ are,” he retorts, annoyed, but she’s right. The only way to take out the herd and its Sawtooth guardian would be to snipe them one by one from the top of the butte, but that would put them dangerously close to the Glinthawks and the nearest Stormbird.

He thinks of the Stormbird at Pitchcliff, of Aloy’s lips stained black with shock wax, and swallows back the surge of bitter anger in his throat. “Maybe we can trade for cells in Free Heap.”

She scowls. “Maybe.”

Eventually, they find a bend in the river where the current slows, swirling lazily around tiny sandstone islands. Tall grass grows thick along the banks, whispering in the breeze. The sun’s out, the Snapmaws are sufficiently downriver, and it’s as idyllic a rest stop as they’re ever going to get.

The first priority is getting clean. He’s got mud caked in places he’d rather not think about, and the Charger’s rocking movement means that wet dust grinds skin raw. They don’t look at each other as they peel off their filthy clothes. Erend’s left his gambeson on the shore, and he spends a long time swishing his shirt and trousers back and forth in the water. He really wants to scrub them, but the riverbed is nothing but soft, red sand. He doesn’t understand how rock can stain fabric, but it’s there anyway, the color of old, crusted blood.

There’s a sharp, raw part of him that can’t help but see it as a bad omen, and he clenches his hands in his clothes, trying to keep his breathing deep and even.

He makes himself glance over at Aloy. She’s got her back to him, bent over to rinse the mud from her hair. He should be staring at her skin, at the way the freckles cluster at her shoulders and arms from exposure to the sun, but all he can see is the pink webbing of scars.

He splashes his face with water. They’re three days out of Meridian. He can’t think like this, not when there’s so much ahead.

 

****

 

Erend is from the Claim, the land of churning glacial meltwater, and he’s never really learned how to swim. He knows enough to mostly not drown, but muscle doesn’t float very well. It’s hot enough that the water feels _amazing_ , so he compromises by lying back on the riverbank, waist-deep and comfortably beached. Their clothes are spread out in the grass to dry, the nearby Chargers’ internal systems whirring softly as the machines placidly till the soil.

If he concentrates on the lapping current, he almost feels _relaxed._   

At some point, he’s skirting the edge of a nap when he hears her move. “I’m sorry,” Aloy says quietly. “I’m just- I don’t know. I’ve been awful.”

It’s been a miserable few days and he _desperately_ wants to be petty, but she deserves better. They both do. “...not exactly been pleasant myself.”

“...you were right, though. We’re stronger together.”

He knows exactly how much it costs her to say that, but there’s still a thick tension in the air, so he’s compelled to be an asshole. “She says I’m right.” He rolls his head to grin at her.. “Mark the date on the calendar. We’ll have a parade.”

She flicks water at him. “I’m _trying_ to apologize, idiot.”

He sits up, leaning back on his elbows. “I didn’t say I wasn’t listening.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Truce?”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Truce.”

They relax in companionable silence, the only sound the lap of the water on the stone and the rustle of the tall grass on the bank. In the middle of the river, a trout jumps to catch a fly, and comes back down with a flat splash.

 _Marry me,_ he thinks. _I’ve been so fucking mad at you, but I love you and there’s no other place I’d rather be than right here right now. I don’t even understand how that’s possible, but it has to mean something good, so marry me._

“The Tallneck,” Aloy says, out of nowhere.

“We’re close,” Erend says. It’s only a few hours east, and he thinks the next nearest one is somewhere two days west of Free Heap, too far to comfortably reach. “It’s not much of a detour.”

“I can’t.” She shakes her head. “Not after how the Watchers reacted. I keep turning it over and over in my head, and it’s too unpredictable. A Tallneck has enormous broadcasting power. I can’t turn one into a bauble without knowing exactly what it would mean.”

“We’ll get there,” he says. “If the Tallneck’s how we do, we’ll figure it out.”

She rolls to her stomach on the riverbank, ripples spreading out from the motion. “You really believe that?”

“I’m watching a bauble work _right now_.”

“Even after what happened?”

“Nothing’s perfect. Even a master smith gets a bad ingot now and then.”

She swallows. “Erend, I promise I didn’t mean to throw that plate.”

“Yeah.” He takes a breath. “Everything just- got too intense.”

“You came anyway?”

“Wouldn’t let you have all the fun,” he drawls.

“I’m serious.”

“There’s no way I’d let you go alone. Not before the Embrace and not after. Not ever. I told you I’ve got your back, and I meant it.”

 _Marry me and I’ll help you carry this. You were handed an impossible mission and given no support, and you achieved it. Now, we’re going into something that might even be_ worse _. You are the smartest person alive; I’m terrified of your power and enthralled by your intelligence, and giving you the rest of my life isn’t even half of what I want to offer._

She looks down, running her fingers through the waterlogged sand and watching the tiny valleys close back up like healing wounds. “Thank you,” she mumbles.

“Plus,” he adds, because she’s wearing a somber expression that doesn’t suit her at all, “have you looked in a mirror lately?”

Her hair is hanging in damp strings, as ochre red as the sandstone walls rising up around the river. Her eyes are like two river pebbles, green hidden in gleaming brown. She’s a long stripe of pale skin, spotted with freckles like she’s gone dancing naked through the blowing dust. “No,” she says. “But I imagine you could help me out.”

“Oh yeah.” He means to say something witty, or charming, or funny, but all that comes out is a quiet, “I love you.”

Her expression goes soft. She rises out of the water to slide down his body, and the moment the smell of her hits his nose - hard travel and sharp herbs - he’s helplessly lit like a beacon.

He has no defense against her. He never has. Fire burns, but it also banishes the darkness, and he needs her more than anything. He can be angry, but mostly it isn’t at her. It’s the black void his father left inside his chest, the choking vines of addiction that he can’t seem to shake no matter how hard he tries. It’s the ancients, fucking up so hard that a thousand years later, the woman he loves is running herself ragged in pursuit of a solution neither of them are sure actually exists.

He’s angry because he just wants to love her. He wants to fall asleep in the wild cloud of her hair, and wake up slowly without an apocalypse looming overhead. He wants the hearth and the home and something like Itamen, all the stupid, simple joys that normal people seem to have without even trying.

Instead, he’s got bloody sand and her slippery body, and steel to his bones, he is so damn grateful to have even this.

“Say no,” she whispers against his belly. “If you aren’t okay with this-”

“I will _never_ say no,” he says forcefully, and then her mouth is around him, hot and tender, and he stops being able to think at all.


	67. Chapter 67

They ride.

Aloy constantly frets about the bauble’s power cell. Around the fifth day, she and Erend round the edge of a butte and stumble right into a trio of Glinthawks busily scrapping a dead Watcher. It’s a short, efficient fight.

When it’s over, Erend sits on the side and rubs the black machine blood off his axe. Aloy stacks up the feathers and takes inventory, frowning at the ones webbed with cracks. “This might be enough.”

The Chargers bolted during the fight, so she goes and retrieves them, rigging up a feathery array on the back of her mount. It ends up looking like the Charger has wings itself, with the bauble secured in the middle like an egg in a nest. It helps, but it doesn’t fully ease the worried lines on her forehead.

They keep moving. They’re still in the middle of the Gatelands, fighting off dust storms that seem to whip up twice a day; dust gets in Erend’s mouth and eyes, and turns his Charger into a grating collection of stiff actuators and squeaking joints. The storms are slightly less bad by the river, but that means skirting thick, angry packs of Snapmaws that growl and gnash their teeth at the edge of the bauble’s influence. Stormbirds circle above the canyons, their huge wings glittering with lightning.

There are two options for travel: slow and hidden or fast and noisy, and since there’s no way to know how quickly the new Derangement in the Cut is spreading, Aloy’s going for speed. That means the bauble needs to broadcast with all its power, minimizing the number of machine altercations along their path.

It also means that there’s a new problem developing with the Chargers. She’s got them pacified, but the longer they’re in close contact with the bauble, the less the pacification seems to work. The blue tendrils slowly dissolve in their architecture, and the machines absently wander off. Erend and Aloy are less than a day from Free Heap when the Chargers just...won’t be tamed. They easily slip away from her spear and its calming influence, and it’s only by Erend’s quick reflexes that the bauble doesn’t walk away with them.

Aloy stares at her spear, dumbstruck. “It didn't work,” she says, her voice gone alarmed and tight. “It just...it just _didn’t._ ”

The bauble operates within some opaque hierarchy. The loss of the Chargers jars them both, and before he can stop her, Aloy purposefully rushes the Snapmaws sunning themselves on the riverbank. She gets one of them pacified, but the other four are definitely _not,_ and she ends up with a ragged bite on her shoulder. When it’s over, Erend’s covered in ice and _pissed_.

“The fuck were you thinking?” he grinds out, gingerly pressing a damp cloth into the blood.

She hisses at the contact. “I had to make sure it still worked.”

“ _Warn_ me next time, okay?”

That night, he dreams of red hair and red blood, huge, terrifying spurts that he can’t stanch no matter where he puts his hands. He jerks awake, choking back a scream, but for the first time, pressing his face into her neck doesn’t calm the shrilling in his brain. He just has to breathe until his body decides to come down on its own.

She makes small, soothing noises, but she doesn’t apologize. She can’t say she won’t do it again; they both know she will, and it’s pointless to argue. Tension creeps between them, air growing heavy and thick ahead of a raging storm, and a dull headache settles into the base of his skull.

 _Marry me_ , he thinks, watching the sway of Nora furs streaked with ochre dust as he and Aloy heft their packs to carry on on foot. _Marry me_ , _before I start to forget why_.

 

****

 

They walk. The original plan was to head to Free Heap and resupply, but it’s far northwest of Dawn’s Sentinel, the Carja garrison at the northern end of the Embrace. On the Chargers, it would have been only a day’s travel, but without the Chargers, it’s almost three, and that suddenly seems like a delay they can’t afford.

“We don’t have any choice,” he points out. “They’ll have some trade at Dawn’s Sentinel, but nothing like we’ll find at Free Heap.” They need a spare power cell. The cells are usually buried deep within a machine’s architecture, and every single one she’s managed to scavenge has succumbed to some fatal flaw within hours. After a terse discussion, he’d agreed to take down a Trampler, but by the time she’d managed to lure one away from its herd, a Shellwalker convoy appeared from around the adjacent butte; the bauble’s shuddery power didn’t cast a wide enough radius to protect from everything, and they had to admit defeat.

Her bitten shoulder is healing well, but he sees the way she shakes when she tries to fully draw her bow. His bad leg is definitely making itself known. They’re limping in different ways, winding their way through dangerous territory without backup, and Free Heap is the nearest point of civilization. They can’t afford to take casual risks.

There isn’t a guarantee they can find an intact power cell at Free Heap, but if the traders are Oseram, they’ll know their components. Outside of Meridian itself, Free Heap is the most likely place.

Aloy’s got the bauble bound to the top of her backpack, its antennae bobbing gently with every step. “We don’t have a choice,” she echoes, and squares her shoulders.

The land goes from hot and dusty canyons to high desert. There are sharp, hardy trees down by the river, and the brush grows thick and gray up the slope, thin snow hidden in the shadows. A Thunderjaw stomps a path in the distance; Aloy hungrily eyes its radar.

Even if they had more luck than they did with the Trampler, the radar would still be too heavy to carry, and they’re already far off the schedule they’d planned. “We can’t,” he says quietly.

She scowls, but grudgingly agrees. “I have no idea how much power one of those things would need.” It’s a frank statement, but her eyes are tight and sad. Unsaid is the reality that she’s barely keeping the bauble alive right now. Erend isn’t a tinker, but he knows the power cell and the Glinthawk feathers are barely keeping up with the bauble’s demands, and Aloy absolutely refuses to turn it down. They need to get to Free Heap, and they need to get there as soon as possible. They’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

He can’t argue, not with the way he’s been dreaming.

 

****

 

It’s a chilly midafternoon when the road starts to wind up and away from the river. Erend will never go back to the Claim, but right at this second, he’s never been happier to see the tall pillars of Oseram charcoal stacks rise into view. The smoke drifts low and blue across the landscape.

As they approach the main gate, a familiar voice rings out above the ambient clang of metalwork. “By the forge, that’s something I never thought I’d see!”

Erend looks up, and Petra Forgewoman is standing on the catwalk over a sluice, hands on her hips and eyes bright.

“Been awhile,” Aloy says, but the leader of Free Heap shakes her head.

“Not _that_. I knew you’d come wandering back eventually. No, my boy Erend pulling his head out of his ass.” Petra grins and climbs down to come and embrace them both. “Unless you’ve dragged him along for a reason other than his...axe.”

Erend’s been on the road too long for banter, but this is Petra, so he lets himself shrug and turn pink, and is duly rewarded. “You’re a lucky man, little ember.” She bumps his shoulder with her own. “I’ll hit you upside the head if you do this wrong.”

Aloy rolls her eyes, but she’s biting her lips against the first smile he’s seen in days.

Petra laughs, a wide, unselfconscious sound. “Get in here,” she says impatiently. “Don’t just leave me to smolder. I want to hear all the news you’ve got, and-” she points at the bauble strapped to Aloy’s back, “you need to tell me everything about _that_.”

There’s hot food and hot tea - “Good on you, kid. Wish more of us would drink less.” - and then the discussion turns serious. Aloy puts the bauble in the middle of the table, and visibly flinches when Petra immediately pops off the front panel.

“Scrapper radar,” Petra says approvingly, and points to a tangle of wires. “That’s gorgeous work, girl.” She eyes Aloy. “What can I do to convince you to stay on as a tinker?”

“Save the world,” Aloy says mildly.

“Ah, well then. Just that.”

The bare details are rote by now. Petra nods, her attention mostly on the bauble. When Erend takes his turn to explain, she abruptly sits up and stares as if she’s never actually seen him before.

“What?” he asks defensively.

“Ersa’s kid brother,” Petra says, her voice gone soft. “Look at you now.” She shakes her head. “Fire and spit, I don’t know how any of us got out of the Spire. I lost almost every cannon and a _lot_ of good people. I don’t trust anything smaller than a cannon, and I’m not gonna lie.” She gestures to the bauble and looks up at Aloy. “I trust _you_ , flame-hair, but this sure doesn’t look like much.”

“It works,” Erend says. “Give us a target. We’ll prove it.”

“Stormbird,” Petra says immediately, and Erend’s stomach falls. “There’s one up the river that’s been fucking with my traders. Bring it down or get it gone.”

He and Aloy exchange a glance. They’ve ducked under Stormbirds; they’ve never tried to banish one.

“That’s a lot of power,” Aloy says. “I need your word that there’s a replacement cell for us.”

“Those aren’t things easily traded, but I might have one or two.”

“They aren’t easily scavenged, either, and if I chase this Stormbird, I’ll _need_ them,” Aloy retorts. “We’ll prove the bauble works. You give me all the cells you have, and I’ll throw in the schematics.”

“Done.” Petra spits on her hand and offers it to Aloy. “I can’t wait to see this.”

 

****

 

They _should_ hold off, but Aloy’s desperate for the power cells and equally desperate to get back on the road.

“This is a terrible idea,” Erend says. “We should at least-”

“Tomorrow we’ll have the sun in our eyes,” she retorts. “We’ve still got about two hours of light. We have to do it now. There isn’t going to be a better time.”

Aiming for the lightning-riddled outline of a giant bird isn’t exactly what he’d call _better_ , but he swallows a prophylactic dose of distilled shock wax and rolls the kinks out of his neck. “If you say so.”

He also doesn’t think the bauble’s going to work. They haven’t had a chance to test it on anything larger than a Sawtooth and the lost Trampler opportunity still smarts.

“Now would be a _great_ time for a Thunderjaw radar,” Aloy grumbles.

They make it to the Stormbird. Aloy puts the bauble on the ground, and sends up several hardpoint arrows. The machine lets loose an unearthly screech, and whirls down toward them, but its lenses stay calm and blue.

“We’ve got your attention,” Aloy mutters. “Now we’d like you to leave.”

It goes well right up until the power cell dies.

Erend didn’t fight the Stormbird in Pitchcliff. He wasn’t even conscious. He only saw the aftermath through a dizzy and drunken haze, but suddenly, it’s like he was right there, fighting beside her the whole time. Blue electricity snaps through his bones, every muscle contracting at once, but all he can see is the desperate flag of her hair.

When it’s over, they’re both shaking. Free Heap guards drag them back to the gates.

“Fire and spit,” Petra says. “I’m sold.”

Erend wants to scream at her. The bird is down, but it wasn't easily done, and the slightest mistake or bit of bad luck could have ended them both. _You don't fucking know what's at stake_ , he wants to shout, but Petra’s got her pile of scrap to defend and no allegiance to anything else.

He's made sure he took the brunt of the hits - that's what he does, it's what he's good at - but Aloy’s still staggering, and doesn't even undress before falling into the offered bed. “Either go or stay,” she mumbles. “Don't hover.”

Erend’s wide awake and restless, the bitter dark of shock wax coating his mouth. He elects not to hover.

Petra’s still up, hunched over her workbench with her loupe elegantly perched on her forehead. “For what it's worth,” Petra says, “I'm glad you both came out okay.”

“I don’t like to experiment with her life,” Erend says, and it comes out sharper than he intends.

“The last time she was here, she went out with two of my most useless hunters and took down an entire herd of Behemoths,” Petra retorts. “She’ll do what she wants; if I can channel some of that for my town, don’t think I won’t.”

She’s right, but he doesn’t have to like it.

There’s a moment of silence, the pop of firewood echoing off the stone. “You know,” Petra finally says, squinting at a roll of wire to measure its gauge, “I’m the closest thing to an ealdorman this side of Mainspring, and you’d get no argument from me.”

He chokes on his own spit.

She looks up at that. “Seriously?”

He’s trying to recover, but his entire body is still seizing from lack of air.

Petra sits up, throwing her head back to laugh. “Oh, little ember.” She reaches over to clap a hand on his shoulder. “You talk about the Ancient Ones like they’re men you knew, but a pretty girl agrees to warm your bed, and you’re struck like an anvil.”

He wants to protest, but she knows the carbon in his steel like she knows the copper in her wire. “...I’ll keep you in mind,” he manages.

She chuckles, the sound rich and deep. “Strike while the iron’s hot, boy,” she says, and it’s an aphorism as old as the stone itself, but one he feels in his bones.

“Now’s not the time,” he says. It’s never been the time, or maybe he just can’t make it the time. Maybe it’s like _I love you_ , a breath he can’t hold forever, but he won’t know how long he can hold it until the moment he discovers he can’t.

“You’re worth more than you think,” Petra says quietly. “You’re here. That’s no small thing.” She gives him a gentle push toward the stairs. “And speaking of no small thing, go to bed. I imagine you’ll be out of here at dawn, and you’ll be useless slag if you’re asleep on your feet.”

He’s too tired to argue, and when he crawls in beside Aloy, the dense, beloved scent of her washes over him in a wave, shock wax mingled with the sharpness of salvebrush in her hair. He curls himself around her the way he didn’t dare in Pitchcliff, pressing his face into the back of her neck and breathing against her skin. He’s sober. She’s alive. Everything else feels like it’s from another lifetime.

_I’m the closest thing to an ealdorman this side of Mainspring._

Maybe they’re already married. Maybe it isn’t something that needs to be said. Maybe Petra’s right, and the fact that he’s here is all the proof he needs. He’s wanted this to be the rest of his life, and maybe it _is_.

Maybe he just hasn’t been paying attention.

 

****

 

Petra must have had an entire crew working the Heap overnight, because when they get up at daybreak, she’s standing proudly with a trio of power cells. “Not quite fully charged,” she says with an expansive gesture. “But fully intact, not even a hairline crack.”

Aloy takes one and holds it up to the light. “Petra, you’re a marvel.”

The queen of Free Heap grins. “Keep talking, flame-hair. There’s still room in this town for you.” She winks at Erend. “That is, when the world’s all good and saved.”


	68. Chapter 68

They put their backs to Free Heap and head toward Dawn’s Sentinel. Aloy finds a herd of Striders and grimly sets her jaw, pacifying two; she doesn’t expect it to last long, and they have no way of knowing. Erend doesn’t think he’ll ever like to ride - not the way she does - but by now he’s accustomed to the movement, and he greatly appreciates the speed.

Tall pine starts to rise from the desert, dry snow dusting the branches and thin stone soil. They keep the Striders at a hard gallop, passing first a pack of roaming Sawtooths and then a herd of Tramplers and their Ravager escort.

Dawn’s Sentinel is the transition between the Gatelands’ high desert and the mossy valleys of the Embrace, and they stop only briefly. There’s news to relay on both sides, and a bare handful of trade to be done. It’s a small garrison far removed from Meridian and the soldiers stationed here are eager to hear anything about home, but beyond a last fortification of their supplies, Erend and Aloy have no reason to linger.

It’s well into the rainy season for Meridian, but further north, spring is wary. Fresh shoots tentatively unfurl amid low spiny brush, and once, he sees a fox hunker down at their passing, her kit caught in her mouth by its nape. The tops of the canyons are white, but down by the river, the air has more cottonwood fluff than snowflakes. Even at the end of winter, the landscape is breathtaking, weatherworn rocks painted with brilliant patches of orange and purple lichen.

There are relics of the Metal World here, more than he’s ever seen in one place: long, rusted cylinders like ancient caves or tunnels, and impossibly tall spires, each wearing a bent crown of broken spikes. One still creaks in the wind, and Erend suddenly realizes that these are somehow windmills, the Metal World’s answer to Meridian’s spinning vents.

They’re back to travelling at night and resting during the day. They bed down in the tall grass, and Aloy spreads her array of Glinthawk feathers out around whichever cell is emptiest, letting the sun slowly trickle into the arm-sized cylinders.

Sunlight gets distilled into power cells, lightning into sparkers, fire into blaze. All of them are distilled into Aloy. He watches her bend over the array, her bright hair cascading down in undulating molten copper. Fire and spit, he loves her.

He’s not sure how he feels right now. He’s traveled farther, harder and longer, but not since Meridian stopped being just some place he was in, and instead became home. He hasn’t traveled like this since Sunfall, and he keenly remembers the night in Blazon Arch when he decided he was going to live for something other than himself.

Before, he’d have sloshed through the days, comfortably drunk as his body carried him along, but he’s not a useless drunk anymore. He can’t be. He’s got Avad and his family and all of Meridian, and most of all, this impossible force of nature frowning at her Glinthawk feathers.

Before, this would have been an adventure, if he’d felt anything at all. Now, he’s on edge. This isn’t a vacation. This isn’t even an expedition. They’re racing against an unknown timeline and heading straight into something that scared a Banuk - a _Banuk_ \- into leaving her home. HADES’s burning Corruption is still vivid in his mind, and Erend is absolutely terrified of what they’re going to find in the Cut.

Still...steel before iron. Aloy throws herself headlong into whatever’s caught her eye, and as always, his job is to follow.

 

****

 

There are only a handful of ways through the mountains, and of the two fastest routes into the Cut, the only one not iced over is the one through the Grave Hoard. The only way to the Grave Hoard is through the Embrace.

He swore he’d never come back here. He swore he’d never let _her_ come back, but here they are, swallowed by swaying grass and tall trees.

This is the northern part of the Embrace. The sky is clear for once, the thin veil of wispy clouds high and sparse. It’s chilly in the shadows, but right now, he’s got the evening sun on his back and rabbit in his belly. He’s cautious, but ready to move.

They crest a hill, and stop to eye the path of a trio of Watchers. “See that?” Aloy asks.

He doesn’t, not at first, but when he does, he’s staggered. It’s a door like the one under Sunfall, only it’s _enormous_ \- at least ten times as high - and carved right into the granite cliffs. “What _is_ it?”

“A Cauldron,” she says.

A Cauldron. A place where HEPHAESTUS creates its machines, one of the many that Aloy left Meridian to investigate. “You’ve been to this one before.” It’s not a question.

She nods once, briefly. “We should get moving.”

He’s seen Sunfall. He’s seen Eleuthia. Against all sense and reason, they’re headed to the Grave Hoard, and just as perversely, he wants to see inside this Cauldron. “What’s it like?”

She raises an eyebrow, but when he doesn’t back down, she sighs. “Dark,” she says frankly. “ _Hot_. What’s the inside of a forge look like when it’s working?”

“Not dark,” he retorts.

Aloy rolls her eyes, and makes a vague movement with her hands. “It’s mechanical. A thousand different moving parts. Nothing about a Cauldron is meant for people. There aren’t ladders. There are barely even hand-holds. The air’s...heavy. Acrid. Almost impossible to breathe.” She shakes her head. “I didn’t want to be there. Can we please keep moving?”

She didn’t want to go into the Cauldrons, but she did. He doesn’t want either of them to be in the Embrace, but here they are.

He waves away a puff of cottonwood and follows.

 

****

 

They keep to the foothills. There’s a Shellwalker trail by the river, and beyond that he can see the broken spines of the Metal World, far larger than the Spire and made jagged by time and weather. The trees here are thin and white, green leaves just beginning to open.

The Grave Hoard looms in the distance, a foreboding twist of metal limbs clinging to a gray mountain peak. He’s never been this close. He’s never actually _been_ to Ban-Ur, and he knows the Cut only by reputation, and if he’s honest, the Grave Hoard, the gateway to them both, scares the shit out of him. It’s more than the name, more than the massive structure made all the more massive by its distance. It’s the cloying sense of doom.

He’s been to Zero Dawn. He’s been to Eleuthia. He’s heard a dead woman with Aloy’s face explain the events of the past, but even if he hadn’t, some deep, animal sense in his bones recognizes the end of the world.

Elisabet hadn’t survived it. None of them had. The fact that Erend is walking beside Aloy is only because Elisabet had taken all the might and magic of the Metal World and woven it into nothing short of a miracle. _Aloy_ is nothing short of a miracle.

Fire and spit, he hopes they can figure this out.

 

****

 

It’s almost dawn, the rising sun staining the trees with rust and blood, when they see the smoke rising from a ridge. “I thought all the Nora villages were further south,” Erend says.

“Outcasts,” she says darkly.

“Actual outcasts?” He regrets the words even before they fall from his mouth.

“Murderers.” Her eyes narrow. “Bandits. This is Devil’s Thirst. Nora don’t go here.”

The prudent decision would be to go to the camp and make trade. The Grave Hoard is two days’ travel away, and beyond that, it’s unknown wilderness.

By unspoken agreement, what they’re _actually_ going to do is stay as far away as they can. He doesn’t know if an outcast is ever allowed to rejoin the tribe, but he’s not sure what one would do to try. He knows the creativity of desperation.

Not much later, they see hunters across the river. Aloy pulls him up short, slowly sinking into a patch of tall grass. Even from a distance, he can see that the braves - no, just hunters, unacknowledged by the tribe - are young, all gangly muscle struggling to catch up with newfound height.

He’ll kill them if they try anything. He’ll kill them if they come after her. He’ll kill them if he _thinks_ they’re coming after her. The lure of the strange new Derangement is too strong for Aloy to resist or he would have insisted they avoid the Embrace entirely, but here they are, and he’s on the edge of a knife waiting for the worst.

“Maybe they don’t see us,” he offers.

“Then they’re idiots,” Aloy mutters. “Stay down.”

They’re kids, he thinks. Of course they’re idiots, but she’s right: he’d been an idiot kid once, and he’d still caused plenty of damage.

He and Aloy crouch in the grass for a long time, the Striders absently nudging the ground behind them. The hunters wind their way through the early-morning mist, eventually taking down a boar.

“Sloppy,” Aloy decrees with a frown.

The hunters heft the beast between them and head back toward the village. They disappear into the woods, but Aloy watches them through her Focus until they’re far out of range. “Anything?” Erend asks.

She shakes her head. “Doesn’t mean there aren’t more.”

It’s almost time to stop and rest, and let the Glinthawk feathers do their magic. “I don’t think we can risk staying put in the daytime,” Aloy finally says.

She doesn’t elaborate, but he hears it anyway: _not when we’re in a valley filled with angry ex-Nora_.

They keep moving, stopping only to eat and catch a fitful nap. The Striders reach the limit of their tolerance to the bauble, and regretfully, Aloy lets them go. They drift away like ember seed, caught in an unknown mechanical breeze.

“Was that more than the Chargers?” he makes himself ask.

She shakes her head. “Not by much.”

Eventually, they find a hunting platform in a huge tree. Moss covers the rope ladder, undisturbed; no one’s used this for several seasons. She swings herself up and he wordlessly follows.

Erend’s too far off the ground to sleep soundly. Aloy perches on the edge like a Glinthawk, her body tense and her eyes sad.

He wants to say they haven't been seen, but she’s the first example that even an outcast can be a skilled tracker. He wants to say that maybe she hasn't been recognized, that both of them are slipping through anonymous, but even bound in its plait and tucked in her collar, her hair is bright and unmistakable.

“How vulnerable are we?” he finally asks.

“I’m keeping watch,” she says, which isn’t an answer.

They’ve gone with only a handful of hours of sleep in the last few days, and she’s so tired she’s shaking. “It’s my turn,” he says.

“You can’t see what I see.”

“I can see enough.” It’s dark, but the breeze is light and there’s enough of a moon that shadows are distinct. A fox barks beneath the trees.

She doesn’t bother to protest again, instead tucking herself against his thigh. She’s out in two breaths.

Aloy’s job is to keep the bauble running. Erend’s job is to keep watch and carry things. She’s better at everything - hunting, tracking, camping - but he’s solid muscle, and he’s comfortable being the strong presence at her back.

 _Marry me_ , he thinks, gently palming the side of her head. He hates seeing her hair bound like a captive thing. He hates the way fatigue etches itself around her eyes, and the bitter way she scans the landscape.

He wants the imagined farmstead. He wants the hearth, the home and the red-haired children he knows they can’t ever have. It’s a cozy dream, one that’s a steady glow in his mind, but smelted down to bare metal, the core of the fantasy is _safety_. The home can be anywhere; he just wants the world to stop ending.

Nothing is safe. Aloy isn’t safe. She _wants_ to be, but the world has other plans, and so she sets her jaw and shoulders the burden that should never have been hers.

 

****

 

They’re slipping backward. He’d thought things were okay, but she’s been increasingly prickly since they left Free Heap. They’re still two days from the Grave Hoard, and every one of his attempts to help has been immediately slapped aside. There will be hours when she’s almost her stubborn, sarcastic self, but then something will snap and she’ll abruptly stalk off into the woods. There’s a storm inside his chest, one part warring for resentful solitude and the other screaming with worry that she won’t come back.

She comes back. He reminds himself that's enough. 

 

****

 

Toward afternoon, they stop to rest. She passes out immediately, and he oils the dust from his gambeson. By sundown, they switch, and when he wakes up, stars glitter overhead. She’s damp from the river, gritting her teeth as she attacks a snarl of hair with a comb.

“Will you let me?” He doesn’t mean to ask, but she’s radiating fierce hurt, and he can’t help it. It’s nothing he’s ever asked. They don’t help each other this way, not unless there’s blood involved and one of them is significantly incapacitated.

She stares at him for a long moment, a defensive crease across her forehead, and then abruptly thrusts the comb at him.

He’s touched her hair a thousand times. He’s run his fingers through it. He knows how to get out the knots, but he’s never tried with carved bone teeth that seem almost too fine to catch. He takes a breath and starts as gently as he can.

“Did you used to do this with with Ersa?” she asks quietly.

“No.” He’d been too little. He has vague memories of his mother braiding Ersa’s hair, but after she died, Ersa took a knife and sheared herself almost down the scalp. Their father raged that it made her look like a boy, but she’d screamed back that she liked it, and that was that. It was one of the only fights Ersa ever won.

He thinks about Nasadi, about her assertion that Jiran wasn’t always a monster. He wonders if his mother felt the same way, if there had ever been a time when she’d looked at her husband with affection. He wonders if they’d been happy.

He can’t imagine it.

Erend’s six years younger than his sister. He wonders if he was an accident, or if maybe he’d just been like Itamen, a last firebreak attempt to hold the family together. He wonders what would have happened if his mother hadn’t died.

He knows his father. There are no delusions; it would have all gone the same way.

He hands the comb back to Aloy, and she makes a tight braid, expressionless. It feels like all the light and life and heat of her is twisted and coiled against its will.

 _Marry me_ , he thinks. _Let me prove I’m doing everything I can to make sure you’re never trapped like this again._

 

****

 

There’s a Stormbird circling the Grave Hoard, because of course there is. They skirt a herd of Grazers determinedly tilling the ice at the edge of a lake, and make their way through a snowy maze of rusted, ancient metal.

He’s seen sketches of the Grave Hoard, but now that he’s here in person, images from Zero Dawn swell into his mind. The writhing metal loops, each tall enough to encompass all of Meridian...it’s not a purposeful construction. Even under a thousand years of ice, he suddenly knows this was a savage attack.

“Is that a Horus?” he asks quietly.

“Yeah.” The word is a pale cloud in the cold air.

He thinks of the Spire.

They walk in silence up the path. At the top, they pause. He takes off his glove and lays it on the nearest tentacle, the ice-rimed metal scarred and pitted with age. “...this is dead?”

It’s the question of a terrified child faced with an impossible monster, but Erend isn’t a child. He already knows the answer before the words leave his mouth. The ghosts in Zero Dawn said the subroutine known as MINERVA would deactivate the Faro swarm - and obviously, it _had,_ because he’s standing here breathing - but HADES had wanted the broadcasting power of the Spire to bring the nightmare machines back to life. Somehow, an ember still burns.

He shivers.

“Elisabet is dead,” Aloy says dully. “Dead doesn’t mean anything.”

The hearth flares in his mind, a mournful stab of emotion.

Beyond the entombed Horus, there’s a cliff with handholds marked with Banuk paint, the bright primary colors sharp against the frozen stone. On the other side of the mountain is the Cut and whatever mystery it holds.

“Are you ready?” Aloy asks.

She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. He will follow her anywhere, whether it’s to the market square in Meridian, the vicious heart of All-Mother, or the fierce unknown beyond the last stand of the Metal World. He walks over and takes her face in his hands. She’s a sky of freckled constellations, pale skin flushed with cold.

“We can't turn back,” she says, as if he doesn’t know.

“Never could,” he says, and for one brief moment, her hands come up to spasm around his own.

"Erend-"

He kisses her forehead, and shifts his axe to rest more comfortably across his pack. “I’m right behind you.”


	69. Chapter 69

Erend _hates_ the Cut.

He’d already decided that the Claim was the coldest, most desolate and generally _worst_ place in the entire world, but standing up to his knees in snow with ice pellets flaying the skin from his face, he knows he was wrong. He was so very, very wrong.

And this particular snowdrift is supposed to be a _path_.

“Feels like if I blink, my eyes’ll freeze shut,” Aloy mutters.

“This is _your_ stupid idea.” He's freezing to death. This is what actual hypothermia feels like. This is _colder_ than hypothermia. He's going to collapse right here and his bones will shatter. No one will ever find his body because no one else is stupid enough to come out here in the first place.

He shoves his mittened hands into his armpits and tries not to die. There’s no way this could be worse, except for the moment when it gets so much worse.

The bauble doesn’t work.

It _catastrophically_ doesn’t work.

He’s carrying it on his back, perched on top of his pack with the antennae tapping the back of his head, when suddenly, he’s _not_. He’s facedown in the snow, his skin burning with the icy impact, and he feels the thing give a hard buzz at she desperately cranks it to maximum power.

The machine they didn’t see rips it from Erend’s back and with a hard crunch, their protection goes dark. Everything becomes a wild scrabble amid metal jaws and an impossible spray of flame. He flails with his axe, hitting nothing but empty air.

Just when he’s sure they’re dead, Aloy shoves him up and onto a ledge. Fire crawls up the rock behind them, but it’s over. They’re out of reach.

He can’t hear over the pounding of his own heart, and his lungs are thick with the stench of burning leather. Heavy snow drops from above, and he claws it out of his eyes just in time for Aloy to dump another armful on his head.

“...you,” he gasps, batting her away. “I’m okay- _you_ -”

She curls up into her elbows, gulping air. “...so _fast_ -”

“What...was that?”

She shakes her head, snow cascading from her hair.

They spend several long minutes in frozen, shocked silence. Eventually, he pushes himself upright with a wince. He’s going to have bruises in all the places his armor is held by his body, but he doesn’t think it’s burned through. “Are you okay?”

She takes several deep, shuddery breaths, letting him check her over. “I think so.”

The bauble is below them, shards scattered in the snow along with most of their supplies. The machine is gone. “It knew,” she whispers. “It went-”

“Maybe the signal-”

“Erend, it went straight for you.” She wipes her face. “Did you see it?”

It was big and fast and somehow on fire. That’s all he knows.

Eventually, the cold starts seeping into his clothes, melted snow trickling uncomfortably from his collar down his back. They have to investigate the supplies; there are well-worn handholds carved into the rock above them - solid evidence that people use this trail - but there’s no way to know where the next camp or village is. They can’t afford to leave salvage.

Aloy’s Focus tells them nothing. Warily, she drops back down to the ground, snatching everything within an arm’s radius and throwing it back up to Erend.

The bauble is useless. He can’t tell which parts are which, but it doesn’t matter: back on the ledge, Aloy moans as she tries to match two pieces together, an agonized expression on her face.

“We can do this,” he says, trying for a heartiness he doesn’t feel. “We’ll just...be careful.”

“Don’t,” she says harshly. “Just- don’t.”

They follow the path. Around nightfall, a deep, haunting bellow suddenly bounces off the mountain, the sound reverberating through the icy crags. After the fiery machine, they’re both so on edge that they’ve got their weapons up and ready before they realize it’s from a Banuk lookout, a long horn built into a cliffside scaffold.

“Outlanders on the mountain!” one of lookouts shouts, making no move to raise her weapon.  

“Sure it’s warm enough up here for you?” the other calls down, laughing. “Or are you lost?”

“I’m warm enough from the climb,” Aloy retorts, audibly grinding her teeth.

“You won’t stay long,” the first says cheerfully. She waves them on. ”Keep moving, Nora.”

It’s called the biggest settlement in the Cut, but that’s a generous term; Song’s Edge is a collection of tents perched on the side of a cliff and bound together with rickety ramps and rope ladders. Erend knows it’s probably built to withstand the fiercest winter storm - it’s Banuk, so it has to be - but it doesn’t _look_ like it could. Even the Nora have foundations of stone.

He’s seen Banuk before, but as he and Aloy pass the guards, he realizes he’s only known traders, people who have chosen to leave their lands. He can scoff at the village, but any derision withers in the face of their scorn. The only thing icier than the air is the reception.

“Outlanders,” one of the hunters says. His spittle snaps when it hits the frozen ground. “Should have turned around.”

Aloy’s gearing up for a particularly scathing response, and Erend hurriedly squeezes her elbow. “Just passing through,” he says.

The hunter actually laughs. “There’s nowhere else to go, Oseram. Beyond here, there’s nothing, not even for us.”

It’s not heartening.

 

****

 

More than anything else, they need supplies.

It's cold. It's _so_ cold, so much colder than either of them had anticipated. The first thing they do is seek out a trader, and Erend doesn't _care_ if the Banuk think he’s a tender outlander. He shoves an exorbitant pile of shards at a trader called Burgrend, and comes away with winter kit that's thicker and stronger than anything he'd ever get in the Claim.

When he's dressed, the wind approaches something very near tolerable. If he pulls his scarf up over his nose and his new ushanka down over his brow, it's only his eyeballs that threaten to turn to ice.

“Better?” Burgrend asks, his voice thick with sympathetic humor.

“Fire and spit,” Erend breathes, twisting to settle the layers in place. “Why are _you_ up here? Wasn't Mainspring miserable enough?”

He laughs. “Trust me, kid, I ask myself that every day.” He squints. “You're from the Claim, then? You actually look a little like one of my old drinking buddies-"

“No,” Erend says sharply.

“Are you sure? Because your eyes-”

“Are mine.”

There's enough steel in his voice that Burgrend closes his mouth. “I'm sorry,” he says quietly. “I was mistaken.”

There’s enough of his father in Erend’s blood. He doesn’t want any of him to show in his face.

It’s an awkward moment, but it doesn’t last. Traders love gossip as much as they love shards, and if Burgrend can’t tease out Erend’s parentage, he’s more than willing to move on to easier subjects. “Myself, I came out here to open new trade routes,” he says. “The Banuk aren’t buying. I get more business from the odd Carja hunter.”

Erend lets him talk. There are something like ten Oseram involved in the trade expedition, and despite himself, Erend can’t help but gravitate toward his own people. He’s only mildly surprised he doesn’t hate them.

Burgrend turns out to be the least gregarious of a very gregarious lot, and thus is instantly the favorite. “My daughter Varga would get along _splendidly_ with your wife,” he says, leaning in as Erend rifles through a box of machine parts. “Well...not your wife. Unless you actually got the ealdormen to agree?”

Erend’s been out of the Claim too long to even imagine such a thing. He wouldn’t go back to beg permission from a conclave of argumentative old men, not when Aloy stands on her own. _Marry me_ , he thinks, _but not that way. I refuse to ask anyone’s permission but yours._

“I’d’ve loved to see their faces,” the trader goes on, oblivious. “Strapping young man like you, Oseram women probably begging to share your bed, and you come back to stand with a Nora huntress. Not,” he says, “that I blame you. Myself, I married a proper Oseram girl long before my first caravan, but if I were your age, I’d-”

“ _Enough_ ,” Erend growls.

“Okay,” Burgrend says, stepping back to appraise Erend with a new eye. “Forgive me. It’s rare a man sees one of his own kin up here. Gets him excited. Can I ask at least why you’ve come?”

“Hunting,” Erend says curtly, and then relents. “It’s been a hard road,” he admits. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”

“This place’ll strip it all away,” the trader says.

“I hope not.”

“Then hang on tight,” Burgrend says solemnly. “Whatever you’ve got and want to keep, hang on and don’t let go.”

 

****

 

The conversation with Burgrend rattles him more than he wants to admit. In the moment, it was a hard twinge like a muscle spasm, but long after it’s over, it reverberates through his chest like a hammerfall, an echo condensed in a space too tight for the sound.

Maybe it truly was a mistake. Maybe there’s nothing of his father in his face, but it doesn’t make a sliver of difference to the tender parts in Erend’s marrow. His father had too many drinking buddies, too many men who turned a blind eye, and the world is too small not to run into at least one. Erend can’t make himself ask. He can’t put his father’s name in his mouth, not when he’s spent years clawing it out.

Not when Aloy’s here, watching him like a concerned bird.

They didn’t have anyone, him and Ersa. His father had buddies, maybe even friends, but not one looked up from the bottom of their cups. If any of them knew, if even a single man had _bothered_ -

He can’t think like that. It’s just mining a vein that will never produce. He has Aloy and the blistering comfort of her love. He has Avad’s trust and Itamen’s uncomplicated affection.  

Maybe Burgrend is complicit, but Erend isn’t an executioner. He’s already let his father steal far too much of his life; he’s not going to let him poison anything else. Erend is the last of a twisted, blighted line, and there’s no greater comfort than knowing when he dies, his clan will too.

It’s odd, he thinks later, bundled next to Aloy that night. He’d been blindsided by Burgrend, but he isn't angry. He’s angry with his father - he never won’t be - but the rest feels...distant. He’s a different Erend. He's the one he actually _likes_ , the one here next to Aloy.

The ache for a drink lurks in the back of his skull, but when he considers the seasons, he realizes he’s been sober over a full year. He just hasn't thought about it.

He honestly never thought he’d get here. In those early days, when he’d been staggering around half-dead and wanting to finish himself off, it had seemed impossible. Almost everything seemed impossible.

 _Impossible things just swirl around you_ , he thinks fondly to the most impossible thing herself, who is sound asleep, filling his mouth with her hair and somehow stealing most of the blankets even in a tight bedroll. _I’m my best self when I’m with you_. _Marry me._

She is the one thing he will never, ever let go.  

 

****

 

As the sun rises, the clouds congeal overhead. Without the heavy swaddle of fog, there’s a persistent rumble in the distance, like a faraway passing storm.

“Thunder’s Drum,” one of the Banuk says, noticing his frown. “Isn’t that why you came?”

“I don’t know,” Erend says. “What is it?”

“The spirits,” she says. “They’re angry with us.”

The sound echoes the uncomfortable clench of his stomach.

It turns out that he and Aloy have arrived just in time for a huge funeral. As he walks through the village, he’s suddenly painfully aware of the roiling grief beneath the resentment of his presence.

“Usually the Banuk burn their dead,” Burgrend says quietly. “But not this time.”

It doesn’t need further explanation. The wooden effigies speak for themselves.

Aloy, of course, glows with oblivious curiosity, twisting her way through the crowd and craning her neck to get a better view. It’s wildly inappropriate, and all he can do is swallow back his discomfort and let himself be tugged along.

He almost pulls her away, back up the path and out of this stupid village. She doesn’t belong at this ceremony. She doesn’t belong amid these mourners. She doesn’t belong here at _all_. He doesn’t know where she _does_ belong, but he fiercely, viscerally knows it’s not here.

 _Marry me_ , he wants to say. _Marry me so I know I have someone to come back to_ , but the words get stuck in his throat. Once, he might have been okay dying alone, but now it feels like a cold, barren field stretching out in the cavern of his chest. He wants a family. He wants life and light and heat, and he wants to be in middle of it, to surround it and have it surround him. He wants it to be like air, filling his lungs and pressing in on his skin all at once.

He can’t imagine what would be worse: having no one to mourn him, or having the mourner be Aloy. If he somehow becomes an empty grave, he doesn’t want Aloy to see it. He doesn’t want her to be the one left behind.

If he’s the one left behind, though, he’ll have failed. He takes the hits, and if the impossible happens and she dies first, it will be because Erend fucked up.

It’s a thought so horrifying that his brain skips across it like a stone.

 _Old age_ , he thinks. _We could die side by side of old age._ It’s such a ridiculous notion that he has to choke back a snort. She gives him a sour look, and he turns back to the crowd.

The Banuk chant and ululate as the drums crescendo, and the ceremony climaxes with the unearthly howl of a giant horn, the same as he’d heard on the path up the mountain. The sound climbs into his bones, threatening to dissolve them in his flesh. The Banuk fall silent as one, and for a long, breathless moment, nothing happens.

Just when the silence hangs on the knife-edge of excruciating expectation, a Glinthawk drops out of the sky, followed by two of its fellows. In a whirl of metal feathers, the wooden effigies are snapped up and hauled skyward, disappearing into the thick clouds overhead.

Aloy’s hand painfully clenches around his own.

When the chieftain starts to speak, Erend is still caught in the suddenness of the moment. He can see Aloy taking what just happened and working it through the frightening machinery of her mind. He feels her push away from him, going after the chieftain to badger him with ill-timed questions, but he can’t move. He’s frozen, as immobile as the effigies swept into the sky.  

 

****

 

The wind shifts overnight, bringing with it a coat of pale ash. The Banuk eye the mountain with fear, covering their faces with scarves and wraps. Aloy brushes a hand across an uncovered hide and her mitten comes away gritty.

It’s incongruous, but the ash makes him think of the Grave Hoard, of ancient bones gone to dust in the air. He’s never considered the name, but the more he thinks about it, the more chilling it becomes: a hoard of graves, an army of Old Ones gathered together to fight off an enemy they knew they couldn’t beat. They’d stood together and died together, united in the face of death.

He thinks about the ghost of the man at the top, the duty-scarred general who’d looked into the future and branded himself a butcher.

Erend is the captain of the Vanguardmen. He has men who have willingly placed their fate in his hands. _We are weapons_ , they’ve said. _Wield us._

Suddenly, it doesn’t feel any different.

“Horde,” he says aloud, and Aloy turns to stare at him.

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing.” He’s woolgathering, something he’s caught himself doing more often than he’d like. He can’t decide if it’s some diffuse fear or just the biting, pernicious cold.

 

****

 

The facts are these: the machines are more hostile, frenzied by what the Banuk call a Daemon. The fiercest machines come from Thunder’s Drum. The shaman Ourea saw the source of the Daemon, and then disappeared into a distant stronghold.

Erend knows exactly how this is going to go.

“Thunder’s Drum is a volcano,” Aloy says. “It’s natural. It’s how the earth works.” She shakes her head. “All this stupid superstition - I can’t get a straight answer from anyone.”

The Oseram don’t have gods, and even if they did, Erend suspects he wouldn’t have much patience for worship. At least one of the Vanguard attends the Sun Priests’ regular service, but Erend’s never felt even the slightest pull.

No, that’s wrong. If he’s honest with himself, the truth is that Erend is angry, and more than a little scared. The Carja’s religion ripped the Sundom in half. The Shadow Carja almost brought about the end of the world. The Nora’s prejudice against Aloy rests entirely upon their faith in their rusting Goddess.

He almost lost her because of all that, a dozen times over. He can already see the future unspooling out before him as Aloy stares resolutely at the smear of ash in the sky, her hands fisted at her hips.

“That’s where our answers are,” she says.

“Don’t,” he says. “Just- please.”

“Erend, I don’t have time-”

“Work with them,” he says. “Don’t make enemies, just this once?”

She bristles. “I don’t-”

“Please,” he repeats, and something seems to break inside her.

“We don’t have time,” she says again.

“We’ll make time.”

“We _can’t_.” There’s a hitch in her voice. “Some things don’t wait, Erend. This Daemon? It’s not going to stop for us to make friends.”

He thinks of HADES, of Aloy’s mad rush to stop the apocalypse, and he really, really wishes he was still Charming Oaf. Maybe then, maybe if he were still as oblivious and stupid, he wouldn’t have to accept that she’s right.

Bright fury blooms in his chest. It was selfish, so fucking _selfish_ for GAIA to destroy herself, to take the easy way out and leave the hard work for a person that barely existed. Not even a person; a _zygote_. He hadn’t even known that was a word, and the fact that he’s had to learn it makes him even angrier. “‘Welcome to the world, good luck saving it’,” he mutters.

“Don’t mock me.”

“I wasn’t.”

Neither one of them will ever get a break, but he keeps hoping. Fuck, how he hopes. _Marry me,_ he thinks. _We can ditch all this. We can leave it all behind. We’ll die anyway, but at least we’ll be holding each other when we do._

Instead, he pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. “Tell me what I can do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this has been awhile! I've been caught up in general life things - mostly good for a change! - and I honestly hadn't realized how long it'd been since I posted. I have lots of things written, I just need to put ass in chair. 
> 
> Thank you for being so awesome, and so patient!


	70. Chapter 70

Aloy ferrets out information like a magnet pulling iron from hay, and within a day, she’s made herself an utter nuisance in camp. Erend watches in mute fascination as she corners one Banuk after another. He stands aside, offering as sympathetic a shrug as he can muster when yet another conversation partner is drained and casually tossed aside.

Burgrend, affable and forthcoming, is a particularly easy target. When Aloy runs out of Banuk, she materializes in front of him and peppers him with questions like Ravager fire. For his part, Burgrend seems more or less nonplussed; Erend makes a mental note to ask around for his daughter. She and Aloy will either be fast friends, or burn the world down between them.

Fire and spit, he loves her.

There just isn’t anything to find out. There are vague descriptions of new structures and the strange way the Daemon holds its machines in thrall, but none of it is enough. Erend’s seen Aloy bludgeon her way through a mystery, but in a maze of dead ends, her frustration ignites like spilled blaze.

She gets ruthless. The Banuk get _pissed_. Erend concentrates on replenishing their supplies, with the full expectation he and Aloy are about to get run out of town.

She’s after the Daemon, and he’s after parts for the dead bauble. They both haggle fiercely with every hunter and trader in Song’s Edge, but between them, they only gets half the parts she needs. “They all want me to pay with this bluegleam stuff,” she growls.

“Then we find it,” he says. “Did they say what it is?”

Aloy shakes her head. “Only that it grows on dead machines. I’ve never seen _anything_ grow on machines, dead or otherwise.”

He wonders about the Tallnecks, and why they aren’t covered in sheets of moss, decades of birds nests tucked in parts that don’t bend. “Maybe it’s different up here.”

Everything is different up here. The air is so cold he almost can’t breathe, and every movement is heavy and hard. By midday, he’s as starving and exhausted as if he’s been running for a week. Every moment is fragile ice.

The most important bauble component is the radar. It’s easily scavenged from a Scrapper, but it’s not a part normally traded; none of the hunters in the village seem interested in collecting a bounty.

Aloy grits her teeth. “Without that radar, there’s no point.”

“We can go get one,” Erend says. “It won’t be the first time we’ve-”

“No,” she snaps. “Not until we know what we’re up against.”

“That doesn’t leave us with a lot of options,” he retorts, and ticks them off on his fingers. “Hire a hunter, commission a trader, or get one ourselves. Pick one, Aloy. We don’t have a choice.”

She doesn’t bother to answer. The Banuk hunters have stopped talking to her, and Burgrend can’t sell them something he doesn’t have.

“I wish I could, son,” the trader says the next morning, his breath a dense cloud in the razor-cold air. “I really do. The hunters will take down a machine, but the shamans are the ones who know how to scavenge a part without ruining it. There was a group of youngsters through here recently who kept selling me broken pieces. Eager as spit, but couldn’t tell a sparker from slagshine. Doesn’t make any sense to me.” He shakes his head. “Like I told Aloy, I’ll keep asking around.”

They can’t find a radar, and they can’t find Ourea. Aloy declares Song’s Edge a dead end, and she and Erend pack their things and shuffle out into the deep snow.

 

****

 

The first time he sees what the Banuk call Daemonism, Erend almost pisses himself.

He and Aloy are half a day out from Song’s Edge, chasing down the one lead they have on the missing shaman Ourea. The snow’s coming down in thick, heavy clots, and even though they’re looking for him, visibility is so poor they practically trip over Ourea’s apprentice.

Naltuk isn’t even old enough to shave, a gangly collection of disparate limbs bundled up in green- and yellow-dyed furs. Aloy’s gearing up to launch a full interrogation, but this kid is just so _young_ that Erend has to intercede. This is what Itamen will be. This is just a few breaths beyond what Itamen already _is_ , barely pubescent and staggering under solemn duty.

Erend wonders if Naltuk chose this, or if it’s been chosen for him. He’s not sure there’s a difference. He’s got to hand it to the kid, though; Naltuk is fierce and tight-lipped. There’s a small hunting party with the apprentice, and they form a tight knot on a sturdy precipice overlooking a frozen lake. “Down there,” Naltuk says. “We will sing your song when you die.”

Erend’s guts go to water.

He knows Corruption. He’s _seen_ it. He knows the wounds it causes and the way it dissolves armor and skin alike. He’s stocked himself with as many vials of antidote as he can carry, because if he doesn’t clench hard against the memory, he can see Aloy lying on the fish-house dock, her eyes rolled back and her blood in his hands-

Corruption is scarlet. It boils like malevolent smoke. Daemonism tucks itself around a machine like the ropes of pacification, but instead of a calm, steady blue, it shifts and flickers with the bruised colors of a deadly storm. The energy leaches out from a central tower, a twisted metal tree that sways and bends in its own impossible wind.

One of the Banuk gets too close. He slips on loose pebbles and he slides down the cliff onto the frozen lake. The purple-wreathed machines don’t notice, but that’s the end of the world’s mercy.  

Aloy lurches forward to rescue him, but another hunters jerks her back. “His song is lost,” the hunter says harshly. “Watch.”

The fallen hunter dies in front of them, his body seizing. With every purple pulse, he loses strength, until he’s nothing but a lifeless husk sinking into the ice.

“Armor,” Aloy says desperately. “Antidote, anything-”

“Nothing.” The single word comes down like the pronouncement of a death sentence.

She drops her head between her knees, breathing deeply against obvious nausea. Erend can’t find air.

When she straightens, she's pale and hugging herself, but her jaw is set. “There has to be something. How does it work?”

“Ourea,” Naltuk says, as if the name is all they need to know.

“You said there were more of these towers.”

“Four,” Naltuk says. “Machines come into their influence and the Daemon takes them over. There may be more.”

Aloy frowns. “Has anyone seen them being built? They can’t just spring out of the ground.”

“No one’s seen it happen.”

“That’s not helpful,” she snaps.

“You’ve seen what they do,” the apprentice says.

She turns back to the tower, barely visible in the blowing snow except for a malevolent purple glow. “No, but I’m going to.”

He doesn’t realize what’s happening until it already is. Panic stabs though his chest, but he’s a soldier, and his body moves before he knows he needs it to. There are two Longlegs strutting through the blowing snow, and when Aloy throws herself down the cliff in an icy spray of gravel, they flare red and angry. Erend’s already there, charging toward them as the tower swells with a new pulse of energy.

It hits him like a cascade of heavy soil. It’s inescapable fatigue, an exhausted ache he feels in the depth of his lungs-

At that moment, one of the Longlegs bellows a sonic blast that knocks him on his ass, and the cloying darkness drops away. He scrabbles through frozen pebbles, following the momentum of his axe as it swings up and away. It catches the Longleg at its ankle, and the ungainly machine staggers. Erend ducks, narrowly missing the swipe of its beak, only to be blindsided by the swing of its tail.

He’s on the ground and drooling when the second pulse from the tower hits, and for one long, blissful moment, he suddenly yearns for the comfort of sleep. He could just stay here, right here, and the snow would bury him like a soft, white blanket-

The second Longleg pounces, flat steel claws stomping him into the dirt. It opens its mouth into a paralyzing blast of sound and every muscle in his body clenches into raw, blazing stone-

 _This is how you died_ , he thinks to Ersa. _He made you listen to this for weeks and you didn’t break-_

Against all sense and hope, Erend forces himself to movement, stabbing blindly, and is rewarded with a deafening blast as the concussion sacs explode.

There’s blood in his mouth and no time for victory. The snow scours his face as he blinks his way back to consciousness. He braces himself for the next pulse, but it still drops him to his knees. The harder he fights, the harder it presses down, until it vanishes as quickly as it came.

He sees the bright flag of her hair, the sacred banner of his one-man army, and shaking the stars from his eyes, he lurches toward her. She’s leaning into her spear, the control tip buried in the tower’s base and a roiling cloth of blue and purple rope warring in the tower’s metal skin.

Abruptly, the blue wins, engulfing the tower as it creaks to a halt. The sudden absence of the heavy energy stuns them both into weightless shock, and then Aloy puts her head down and throws up.

Somehow, they make it back to the ledge where Naltuk is waiting, his face gone shocked and pale. “You claimed its power,” the kid croaks.

‘Where,” Aloy grinds out, “is Ourea?”

“Up the Shaman’s Path,” Naltuk says quickly. “In the Icerasps.” He swallows. “What she seeks...it’s hope.”

It’s freezing cold, and they’re still reeling from battle shock. Aloy is angry and upset and swaying on her feet, but somehow, her face folds into a weary sympathy. “So are we.”

 

****

 

That night, the storm howls around them, snapping the walls of the tent and sending tce pellets skittering across the hide. It’s cold. It’s so _fucking_ cold. Every joint in Erend’s body is locked in frozen rigor mortis. It’s too windy to keep a fire, and too dark to keep moving.

He almost longs for the heavy langor of the tower’s deadly pulse.

“What’s our plan?” he makes himself ask. “We need a Scrapper radar, and we need to find Ourea.”

Aloy’s pressed against his side, shivering. “The bauble is a liability. It was on maximum power, and the machine on the path went right at it.”

“That thing wasn’t even Daemoned, was it? Daemonized? Daemon-y?”

“Daemonic,” she mutters. “If you’d _listen_ , you’d get it right.”

That stings more than it should. “Hey, I’m just trying to help.”

“How are you going to help?” she snaps. “You saw that hunter - if _you_ take that hit, you’re dead in four breaths.”

“I _did_ take that hit,” he retorts. “So did you. We’re still here.”

“Erend-”

“I don’t have to take a hit just to find some parts.”

“It’s not just parts! It’s parts from a machine that hunts in _packs-_ ”

“I know how Scrappers work, Aloy. Give me a little credit here.”

She doesn’t say anything, and he realizes after _far_ too long it’s because she’s _crying_.

“This isn’t impossible,” he says, because it’s the only thing he can think of.”

Her body goes stiff with annoyance. “I didn’t say it was.” If they weren’t bundled together so tightly, she’d flop over and ignore him. Instead, all she can manage is an ineffective wriggle, and the futility of it is somehow even more scathing. “Get some sleep.”

 

****

 

He tries to sleep, but it’s way too cold. Even wearing every garment he owns and snuggled under heavy furs with Aloy pressed against him, he can’t concentrate on anything else. His body screams for warmth like it might scream for air. He can’t imagine anything worse than this moment, but he’s starting to understand that the Cut likes a good challenge.

There will always be something worse. Erend doesn’t know if he should find that comforting.

He grits his teeth and tries to distract himself.

The machine code is like a ladder: there’s a hierarchy. There’s calm blue, yellow alarm, and red attack. Aloy’s spear trumps calm blue and, if she’s quick, yellow alarm. The bauble trumps even red alarm, but in the bauble’s presence, machines that she could previously keep pacified indefinitely start to feel some kind of mechanical fatigue.

He wonders if the bauble causes something like burnout. Maybe Aloy’s spear is a torch to the bauble’s bonfire.

He hasn’t yet decided how Corruption fits. Corrupted machines are immune to the spear. Since HADES was defeated, they haven’t come across any more, so they don’t know how Corruption fares against the bauble. He’s heard Aloy mutter about signal strength and slaved nets.

Salved nets. Networks? Earthworks. Pieces of stone and clay made into metal and plate. He wonders if the machines were ever made by human hands.

His thoughts drift up on each other like snow.

It’s cold.


	71. Chapter 71

The cold takes on a new vocabulary. There's the thin, bone-deep ache of a long night. There's the sharp sting of ice pellets. Heavy, thick cold sinks into waterlogged boots. Damp cold, bright cold, dark cold, vicious, biting, clinging, and above all ubiquitous.

Right now, in the featureless gray dawn, it's the simple absence of heat. It's the cold of empty air, the cold between stars, the sort of cold he’s starting to imagine comes after death.

Between the two of them, there isn't enough heat to warm a single body. If they don’t move, they’ll die, but the effort to move seems insurmountable.

The storm’s passed, and only a handful of tiny, hard flakes drift around his head as Erend staggers off to piss against a tree. Acrid steam rises up, curling around his hand. When he comes back, Aloy’s gone. Mechanically, he finds tinder and flint, and isn’t at all surprised when even the tiny fire shivers in the frigid air.

Somehow, he manages tea. With a cup in each hand, he follows the deep path of her boots down the bank onto the frozen lake. She’s sitting cross-legged in front of the dead tower, snow up to her chest as she swipes at something on her Focus. He hands her her cup and squats beside her. “What do we have?”

Aloy gestures to the tower’s base. “Three control points.”

“So you overrode it.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. “ She points to a protuberance near the thing’s crown. “That’s a heat sink, though. The Khopesh - the Metal Devil - has those, too. Hit one and the whole machine overheats.”

“So that would kill it?”

“It’d help.”

“Thank the forge.” He rocks back on his heels and sips his tea, watching a brief frisson of electricity spark in the dead tower’s radiating paddles. There are more of these things - maybe one, maybe a thousand - and his tea’s gone cold, and Erend is suddenly so very, very tired.

“Can’t we just go home?” he hears himself ask.

She snorts, not recognizing it as an honest question, and sinks back into her Focus.

 

****

 

They can’t repurpose the tower. He’d had a burst of insight that maybe it could replace the bauble, but she’d immediately shaken her head. From what she can tell, overriding it means frying it completely, destroying it just as surely as blowing the heat sink. He can’t decide if he’s glad to hear that information or not.

It means they still need a Scrapper radar. On the way back to Song’s Edge, they stumble across a pack of the machines, busily breaking down a dead Watcher. One seethes with tyrian Daemonic energy.

They don’t get any salvage. Corrupted machines can’t be overridden by her spear, and they learn the hard way that Daemonism can’t be, either. They also learn that blood freezes the same as anything else.

They stagger back into Song’s Edge furious and frustrated. Aloy seems to think losing the Scrappers is Erend’s fault, but it _wasn't_ , it was just bad luck, but whatever the truth, the result is that they don’t have what they need, the Banuk aren’t cooperating, and terrifying mechanical trees are sprouting up in deep snow.

“I have to go find Ourea,” Aloy finally says. “We don’t have a choice.”

There’s always a choice. They could easily - easily, oh so easily - choose to let the world die, and go south to wait out the apocalypse in warmth and comfort.

“Take my advice,” Burgrend says, grabbing Erend’s elbow as he shuffles through camp, fuzzy-headed and nursing his misery like he’d once savored a drink. “Eat everything. Eat all that you can. Remember when you were a kid? Eat like that. Your body needs it.”

Erend remembers how he ate as a kid. It wasn’t at all how Burgrend’s imagining, but he starts loading on fatty cuts of meat anyway. It almost helps.

Aloy catalogues their supplies and plans the route. “Icerasps,” she grumbles, considering the mountains heaving up on the horizon. “Stupid name. As if they weren’t dramatic enough.”

They’ve been fighting so much lately that he immediately swells with defensive indignation at her tone, but then her words sink in, and in this case, he has to agree.

He hates the Cut. He’s exhausted and grumpy. She’s exhausted and brittle. This isn’t who she is, it’s not who he is, it’s not who they _are_ , but it’s so fucking _cold_ that they can’t afford to stop and regroup. They just keep grinding against each other like the broken edges of a blade.

It feels like he’s never been warm or sated or happy. He wants to leave. He wants to leave more than he’s ever wanted to leave anywhere, but he's stuck following Aloy through this frozen hell, so he stays.

 

****

 

Ever since the flaming machine bit their bauble, everything that can go wrong does. They haven’t been back at Song’s Edge three days when Erend goes out with some hunters on a report that there might be more Scrappers in the area, and the ice opens up beneath him. He hears the crunch before he feels the pain, and then _fuck_ , he feels the pain and almost pukes.

They make it back to the village. The disinterested healer does some agonizing prodding, and there’s at least some bit of luck left in the world, because his leg somehow isn't broken.

It’s the biggest fight he and Aloy have ever had, he thinks distantly as they’re right in the middle of it. It’s not his fault, but he _could_ have been more careful, and she’s riding the hard edge of the uncharacteristic hysteria he’s seen far too much since they left Meridian.

“Can you just be careful?” she yells. “Just _once_ , Erend. Just this _one time_ -”

“You think I _meant_ to do this?” he snaps.

There’s more shouting and some unkind words that neither of them actually mean. She doesn’t speak to him for the rest of the day.

His leg hurts, but it’s nothing compared to the ache in his chest. It isn’t his fault, but she’s wound too tightly to apologize, so he hobbles down to the hot springs and collects a good bundle of the fire kiln growing at the edge of the pool. It’s nothing she couldn’t have gotten herself, but the little brown speckles nestled in the lily’s throat remind him of her freckles.

When he makes it back to camp, she’s sitting outside their tent, glowering as she makes some minute adjustment to her shortbow. “Got you these,” he says, and it suddenly feels incredibly stupid, a gesture too childish for her to accept.

Wordlessly, she offers up a small pot of salve in exchange. When he lifts the lid, the astringent heat of fire kiln makes his eyes water. “...did we just get each other the same thing?” he asks.

She finally looks up. “It’s good for muscles.”

When he settles in beside her, she leans over to briefly touch her cheek to his shoulder. “I just need something to go right,” she admits.

“I’m not exactly thrilled right now either.” He takes a breath. “What if we...split things up?” It’s not what he wants. It’s exact opposite of what he wants, but she’s adamant they’re on some kind of unknowable deadline, and they’re both feeling it.

She doesn’t want to go by herself, and he doesn’t want her to, but the missing shaman Ourea is their only hope. She blows air out of her cheeks. “Yeah.”

He can’t say anything, so he just kisses her forehead, inhaling what little scent of her hangs in the cold air.

The next morning, Aloy leaves without fanfare, and Erend tries very, very hard not to cry.

 

****

 

She comes back on a Charger four days later, the vanguard of another paralyzing storm. The sky’s already black with heavy clouds, and the Charger shudders at it moves.

“Bluegleam,” Aloy mumbles as she all but tumbles off the machine into his arms. Her lips are blue, crystals of ice dusting her eyelashes. “Some kind of lubricant. Frozen like everything else out here. Stupid thing to trade.”

She found Ourea, but learned nothing useful about the Daemon. The shaman promised answers could be found in Thunder’s Drum, because of course the most dangerous place in the region would be the place Aloy has to go. The volcano rumbles in the distance and belches ash that drifts down like gray snow.

The Banuk chief made it very clear that no outlanders would be allowed up the mountain, and Aloy’s pushed him hard enough that he’s no longer speaking to her. If she’s going to get what she needs, Aloy has to make amends to the werak, and it galls her.

Still, she squares her shoulders and resolutely grits her teeth. She has a handful of errands to run and favors to earn, and he’s still limping hard. It becomes a routine: she leaves, comes back for supplies, and heads back out.

Maybe it’s the cold, but they can't stop fighting. Erend's here to take accounts for Avad, and even staggering around in a makeshift splint he’s successful, but beyond that, there’s nothing to _do_. He wanders around the camp making a general nuisance of himself. He oils his gambeson. He sharpens and oils his axe. He makes sure he’s got the right potions. He talks to the traders about the routes they like to take and the things they’ve seen along the way. He tries to engage the Banuk and wring whatever information he can from them, and sometimes it even works.

Otherwise, he is completely, utterly _bored_.

In the meantime, Aloy disappears for days at a time. She’s slowly building cachet with the werak, so he can’t really fault her efforts, but he _misses_ her. The werak has made it clear that while her attempts to gain favor with the shamans are tolerable, Erend is _absolutely_ unwelcome. He desperately wants to help, and right now helping means sitting back and letting her do what she does best. It means keeping the fire burning and the tent warm, having the potions and weaponry she needs, and doing everything he can to support her efforts.

He’s trying not to resent it, but he’s too raw to succeed.

When Aloy does come back, reeking of freeze rime and fire kiln, it’s hardly a celebration. She immediately falls into bed and passes out for half a day. When she wakes up, she snarls at everyone within hearing. If the Banuk valued words over deeds, they'd have killed the both of them weeks ago. 

The cold permeates everything, aggressive and painful. The Banuk seem largely inured to it, but the Cut is far icier than the Claim in its deepest winter. Erend’s taken to chewing freeze rime himself just to take the edge off; it leaves him feeling nauseous and vaguely distant, but at least his teeth aren’t chattering out of his head.

A couple of hunters grudgingly asked him to join a hunt, and even though he’s still not completely healed, Erend tries not to trip on his own feet saying yes. At first, it seems like just another Charger herd, but then the machine that ate the bauble appears out of nowhere. It’s got the speed of a Stalker, the bulk of a Sawtooth, and it fucking spits _flame._

When it’s over, he realizes that’s why they call it a Scorcher.

The hunting party makes it back to camp, smoldering but triumphant with a heavy load of of plates and wire. As luck would have it, it’s one of the days Aloy has chosen to grace him with her presence, and she immediately goes for his throat.

“I need something to _do_ ,” he says defensively. “I’m here. Let me help.”

“Don’t get hurt,” she growls. “ _That’s_ how you help.”

“Two wars,” he reminds her. “This axe isn’t just decorative.”

“Remind me how that last one turned out for you,” she retorts, and stomps back to the tent.

Fire and spit, he almost wants her to just head right back out, but then she eventually _does_ , and her absence is a ragged, gaping hole in the middle of his chest.

 

****

 

Someday, she’s just not going to come back.

The world is entirely white. He’s been in storms in the Claim, but this isn’t a storm. This is just…nothing. The Banuk are hunkered down in their tents, but seem unconcerned. There’s no wind. There’s no stinging cloud of ice crystals flaying the skin from his face. Tiny flakes drift lazily down, and his breath disappears into the fog as soon as it leaves his lungs.

He can’t see, and he can’t hear, and he’s utterly lost. The silence presses into his skull.

He wants a drink. He’s utterly disoriented, and he wants the burn of the alcohol to help lift the suffocation.

“Daemonism,” Aloy mumbles, gritting her teeth as he gingerly applies a paste of fire kiln and freeze rime to the ragged burn on her shoulder. “They just won't die _._ ”

It is _not_ what he wants to hear.

There's some kind of fever going around the camp - a common occurrence for newcomers, he's told, and rarely fatal - and of course he catches it. He starts getting the chills mid-afternoon and by evening he's miserably retreated into his furs. It runs its course in three days, but between his leg and _this_ , this adventure is the worst he’s ever had.

When he finally comes out of it, bleary-eyed and resentful, Aloy’s there. She smooths a hand through his hair, and says quietly, “Look at you. I’m so sorry.”

“This isn’t fun,” he tells her. There are shadows in her eyes that have nothing to do with the firelight, and more than anything, he wants to grab her and _go_.

“It isn’t.” Her voice goes thick and damp. “I didn’t know it was going to be this hard. At least with HADES, I-”

She doesn’t say it, but he hears it anyway. She had the mysterious Sylens to guide her, and the shattered ghost of Zero Dawn. Now, she has Ourea and Erend, and neither of them can help her the way she needs.

“We’ll figure this out,” he says.

It’s a lie, but she lets it stay, and for the first time in weeks, curls up in the hollow of his neck.  


	72. Chapter 72

She’s gone for almost a week, and this time, he’s sure she’s dead. Erend waits, he has to _wait_ , but the bedroll is empty and cold and he can’t sleep. He tears at his hair, feverishly weighing the risk of being gone when she comes back against the risk of charging out into the wilderness to try and find her.

Just as he’s packing his bags, she falls out of the storm. She isn’t even on a mount, just dragging herself through the thigh-deep snow.

Muscle takes over, and he immediately pulls her toward the tent. She’s barely conscious, and barely responds to the presence of the fire. When he gently tugs off her shirt, her entire right side is covered in a wide, horrifying bruise that radiates out from her arm. “Tower,” she mumbles.

“Where?” The question is just a movement of his mouth. He’s concentrating on getting her out of melt-soaked hide and into something less susceptible to hypothermia. She’s not even shivering.

“Gone.” She snorts. “No one else was gonna do it.” She raises her hand toward his face, her fingers locked in sharp, quick tremors. “Shock wax?”

“I’ll get you some,” he says. “Hang on, okay?”

Aloy awkwardly pats at his chest. “Hang on,” she repeats, eyes sliding closed. “So _tired_ of hanging on.”

 

****

 

Aloy sleeps like a corpse for two full days. Erend sits nearby and chews his fingernails down to flesh.

The bruises on her arm deepen and spread, the same awful color of Daemonism. He tries to ply her with food, but she pushes it away. “If I eat that, I’m going to puke.”

“You gotta to eat _something_.” Her teeth are almost black with shock wax, and they’re both taking too much freeze rime. The stench of it leaks from their pores, a heavy, musty perversion of mint. He doesn’t know what it’s doing to their insides, and he doesn’t want to.

“I said _no_ ,” she growls, and burrows back into the furs. “Leave me alone.”

He wonders if it’s called the Cut because it slices through everything.

****

 

He wants to stay with her and give her his warmth, but his full bladder has other plans. When he’s done, Erend makes himself walk, a brief, painful circuit of the settlement. The weather’s in between storms, the bright, deceptive stillness that he’s come to recognize as an inhale of icy breath.

He wonders if it’s raining in Meridian. He realizes they’ve been gone so long he doesn’t even know what season it is; the Cut seems to be locked in interminable winter, so he has no way how to tell. He thinks about his Vanguard, of the sturdy, loyal men under a command he’s not there to give; he wonders how long it would take before he and Aloy are declared lost, if there would be a hard and fast decision - a proclamation followed by a funeral for absent bodies - or if his men would just gradually lose hope, watching a horizon he’d never crest. He thinks about Ersa, about the body that wasn’t hers and the casket she ended up filling anyway.

His breath condenses in front of his face, a cloud as cold and ephemeral as the moon.

“The Cut is unkind.” The voice startles him, and the woman startles him even more. Her muscular arms are bare, tiny, glowing cables weaving in and out of her skin like tunnelling worms. There are a dozen shamans in Song’s Edge, but all of them together hold barely a granule of her power.

Ourea assesses him frankly, her eyes like dark pebbles. “It will take a person and break their spirit,” she says.  Her tone is mild and almost kind. “I don’t believe that’s happened to you.”

He doesn’t have a response. He’s not sure it hasn’t.

“It’s not often a Nora will travel outside her lands,” she goes on. “In the company of an Oseram, no less. Why?”

He’s already caught so flat-footed by her appearance, he doesn’t know how to answer. “Why…?”

“I know why she hunts,” Ourea says, leaning in close enough that for a moment, her musk overwhelms him like psychotropic smoke. For a single breath, he's somewhere else, surrounded by white-blue-pink flicker amid yellow ochre and the impossible heaviness of the past. “Why do you follow?”

Erend opens his mouth, but _I love her_ is stolen from his lungs. “She knows where she’s going,” he hears himself say. He coughs once, but blue-white-pink ropes of light still glimmer at the edges of his vision, empty as a sigh.

“Do you know what she's leading you to?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Steel before iron,” he says. It doesn’t make sense out of context, but then, neither do he and Aloy. Erend is an Oseram from Meridian standing here in Banuk territory. He’s following a woman who wasn’t born, the living key to ancient doors. Context defines them both, and right now, there isn’t any. They’re just two people bound together and pulled apart, and there isn’t a single part of him that doesn’t hurt.

He’s rambling inside his head; he’s freezing and overwrought, and he just needs to get back to Aloy. The only lights he wants to see are the pinpricks in her Focus.

“Steel follows a lodestone just as surely as iron,” Ourea says. “There are dozens here who are equally hardened. Why do you follow, and not they?”

Erend isn’t a forgeman. He wields metal, but doesn’t make it. He’s been a weapon his entire life, his axe an extension of his body. He can’t suss a grade of steel beyond its reaction in battle, but he can still tell its worth.

This is more than that. This is one of the mystical forces of the world. He hadn’t known it until so much later, but the moment he saw Aloy in the Embrace, something inside of him shifted. He’d been a jumble of mismatched gears until she’d somehow set him straight. He can say he loves her with every breath until he dies, but it’s empty air compared to how he feels. Steel doesn’t question being drawn in, and neither does Erend.

People follow her, from tinkers to kings to certain hopelessly besotted Oseram. The Banuk should have fallen in line the moment Aloy set foot in the Cut.  

“They’re bungs,” he says before he can stop himself, bitterness filling his mouth. “That’s all.”

Luckily, Ourea laughs, sharp and quick like she hasn’t had much practice. “Perhaps that’s true.” Her expression goes soft and sober. “I won’t pretend I don’t prefer the company of spirits to my people, but Aloy...she brought me back here of my own free will. The spirits sent her to me when I thought all had been lost.”

“She has that effect,” he agrees.

“And you,” Ourea says. “What spirits brought her to you?”

“The end of the world.” It’s meant to be a joke, but levity evaporates like his breath in the frozen air.  

She nods, and falls into silent contemplation.

The sky here never seems to have many clouds. In Meridian, there was always a clear demarcation between rain and sun, but in the Cut, the blue just drains to gray. There’s no warning, no way to ready himself. The Banuk have either figured it out or they just don’t care, and take no notice of the weather.

Erend hates them a little more for that.

“It’s not that we don’t care,” Ourea says quietly. “It’s that we can’t waste time on things we can’t change.”

He’s too cold to feel sorry for thinking out loud, and too cold to backtrack.  “That almost makes sense.”

“Being here is hard,” Ourea says. “It’s a test of dedication for even Banuk to travel these lands, and the fact that you’re here should afford you some measure of assurance.”

 _It really fucking doesn’t_ , he wants to say, but Aloy’s here, Aloy’s safe and asleep, so he just swallows and nods.

“Still.” She gives him a wry sidelong glance. “If you stay long enough...it’s said a child conceived here will have the stars in its eyes. It will grow to be wise and strong.”

Any other time, any other place, he’d take it like a punch to the gut. He’d choke and stammer and make an idiot of himself, but right now, he’s too cold and exhausted to even pretend. The ache in his heart is so constant it can’t even throb, so he just shakes his head

There’s a long moment of heavy silence, punctuated only by the tiny snowflakes starting to lazily descend. “This world tries to break us,” Ourea finally says, awkwardly. “Every Banuk is born with the fight in their blood.” She turns to go, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Iron sings in iron in both blood and steel, Erend Vanguardsman.”

“Does it ever stop snowing here?” he asks.

She almost laughs. “No.”

 

****

 

It’s not until later, when he’s sitting alone by the evening fire, that Erend stares up at the sky, sleepless. Amid the twisting green sky-smoke, the stars are a thick spray of glittering frost against an endless, bitter black. The notion glows in his mind, an ingot he doesn’t dare shape but can’t make himself discard.

It’s buried itself in his marrow, worming in like a parasite from that first moment Itamen shyly followed him around. Aloy is life and heat, a hearth he hadn’t thought he could want. If he could ever-

If there could _ever_ be-

There wouldn’t be stars in its eyes; there would be bright sparks, dancing upward toward the night. The blazing fire would burn away the poison in Erend’s bloodline and turn the fallow field of his history into something hopeful and green. It would take the isolation of Aloy’s life and wrap her up in something safe and good.  

He doesn’t know if he’s like that. He doesn’t know if Aloy is like that. He doesn’t dare ask, because even if it’s something they both wanted, she was born in the mountain, and maybe her body wasn’t meant to hold another person. Maybe he’s too rotted himself. Nothing is certain, especially not in this brittle, frozen land, and he knows uncertainty better than anyone else.

In the distance, a fox barks, and he wraps his furs more tightly around his shoulders. There are Daemonic towers all across the Cut, seething darkness that takes a hunter and pulls the life from their bones. The specter of HEPHAESTUS looms somewhere in the atmosphere around them, ephemeral and deadly.

 _We aren’t a threat_ , he thinks, scrubbing his hands over his face. _You were supposed to help us._

He thinks about Dervahl, a tinkerer whose brilliance crumbled into insanity. Dervahl had been able to harness sound itself, and amid myriad possibilities, he’d chosen to kill Ersa with it.

There’s no difference here, not that Erend can see, but it’s easier to hate a man. It’s easier to track a man and far easier to kill him. HEPHAESTUS is more of an idea than anything else, and if Erend was afraid when he was tracking Dervahl, it was because he wasn’t sure he’d be competent enough to dispense justice.

He’s still afraid, but this fear is different. He’d been flailing then, uncontrolled panic churning through his body like a flooding river. Now, the fear tastes like resignation. He’s not afraid because he doesn’t know what’s coming; he’s afraid because he _can’t_ know. He never expected Ersa to die, he never expected HEPHAESTUS, and he never expected this Daemonism.

He never expected Aloy, either. He doesn’t know when he’s going to die, but he also didn’t know he was going to _live_ , and in his core, that’s what keeps him moving. Everything is uncertain, but uncertainty doesn’t always mean loss, and now that he’s learned how to hope, he’s going to slog through the mud forever.

Maybe there’s death at the top of this stupid mountain, but after Aloy does whatever she needs to do-

He’s going to do it. He _has_ to. He’s going to take off his armor and sit her down and lay his truth down at her feet. There isn’t a good time, but there’s never going to _be_ a good time. The best he can hope for is a brief moment to catch their breath, and that’s when he’s going to tell her he wants to marry her. She’ll agree or she won’t, but it won’t be a silent, heavy secret carried like a anvil in his ribs anymore. If he tells her, he can follow her into the unknown with a clear head.

When Erend’s finally tired enough that he thinks he won’t toss and turn, he goes and wraps himself around Aloy in the darkness.“I’m sorry,” he whispers against the nape of her neck. “I just...I’m with you. I think I got lost for a second, but I’m here.”

One hand comes up to sleepily cup the side of his head. “Idiot,” she mumbles fondly, and he lets the fire of her hair and warmth of her body steal the doubtful chill from his bones

 

***

 

As soon as Aloy is properly awake, she stabs her spear down at Aratak’s feet.

Erend instantly regrets ever feeling bored.


	73. Chapter 73

All the odds in the Cut are stacked against them, and the Banuk side with the Cut. The race for the werak reminds him of her Proving, all unfair rules and impossible terrain. There are even balloons, slowly rising like spirits into the air.

There’s an alloy, Erend thinks, that’s equal parts fury, frustration and resolve, and Aloy burns with it. She squares her shoulders and digs her feet into the ground, kicking aside bits of snow like a Charger to get solid purchase beneath.

“You’re kin,” one of the Banuk hunters says, pinning Erend with a fierce glare.. “Kin wait at the finish. If you interfere, I will cut you down.”

“Interfere with _her_ , and it’ll be the last thing you ever do,” he snaps. He’s been in their camp for weeks, and he’s crystallized with brittle anger. If this is what it takes for Aloy to get up that damn mountain, this is what she’s going to do. He stood in the shadow of the Spire to stave off the end of the world; he’s so much stronger now, so much more _committed_ , and he’s just itching to prove it.

 

****

 

He’s watching from the last cliff as she comes into view, stretched out in a dead sprint with her hair streaming like glorious fire behind her. He’s ready to punch up with a triumphant cheer when out of nowhere, an enormous machine - no, two - _three_ of them -

He’s going to help her. He’s helping-

He’s being held _back-_

 

****

 

Aloy fights. She wins. Three massive Frostclaws lie dead on the ground, and she’s the one who killed them.

Of course she is.

The former chieftain concedes, and limps off the battlefield in the arms of his kin. Erend is the only one who runs to Aloy. There’s blood pouring from her nose, the shoulder of her anorak charred down to skin. They don’t even make it ten feet before she’s on her knees, vomiting blood into the snow.

Like protects against like and opposites heal: she’s drowning both ways in fire kiln and freeze rime, and he has no choice but to hold her down and give her more.

Night falls before they make it back to the camp, and the air shreds his lungs with every breath. It’s so cold he can’t feel enough of his body to shiver.

He lights the fire with fingers that aren’t connected. Aloy watches with half-lidded eyes, the blood on her face gone crisp and cold. He wants to scream at her. He wants to stomp and throw things, to destroy everything around them, anything, _anything_ to dispel the choking terror in his throat.

“Did it work?” he makes himself ask. In his own ears, the words crunch like pebbled ice. “Are they fucking _happy_ now?”

Her head lolls back into the thick fur of her hood. “Wake me up at dawn,” she mumbles, and the look she gives him absolutely ensures he's going to do it.

“You’re insane,” he says instead. “All of this? This is the definition of insanity.”

She manages a smirk. “And where are you?”

He’s here, of course. He leans over to kiss her forehead, wrapping himself around her in the cold.

For the thousandth time, Erend hates that they just can’t walk up and solve the mountain’s mystery with a single trip. The way is blocked by an impossibly high wall that can only be breached with Banuk help. Ourea knows the secret way in, but Aratak would have stopped Ourea the moment she set foot outside her retreat. Aloy needs Ourea and Aratak, and in order to get both of them, she’s had to forcefully take control of the werak.

The world keeps demanding leadership from her. Aloy’s made it adamantly clear that she hates it, but over and over again, people thrust command upon her, and she has no choice but to accept. He watches her squirm and rebel, but in the end, she grudgingly takes her place at the front of the line, and because she’s Aloy, she _wins._

Sometimes, he’s envious at how easily it comes to her. Aloy huffs and rolls her eyes and snarls, but when it matters, she’s there with a steady voice and steadier aim. Ersa was supposed to be the captain of the Vanguard; the fact that Erend’s the one giving the orders and shouldering that weight is only a fluke of fate. He’d been the idiot brother, and that’s all he was supposed to be. It’s been an impossible learning curve, and even now, he’s not sure he’s getting it right.

This isn’t who he was supposed to be, but here he is. He’s a thousand miles away from home in search of something he’d never imagined could exist.

 

****

 

In the morning, she looks like hell, but the entire atmosphere in Song’s Edge has changed. The Banuk buzz with excited trepidation about Aloy’s ascension. Even Aratak is grudgingly deferential.

“Longnotch is our entry to the mountain,” Ourea tells her. “It’s a day and a half from here. I’ve sent word that we’re coming.”

Aloy nods. She’s moving on nothing but momentum and freeze rime. She’s favoring the last two fingers on her right hand, the apparent contact point for whatever happened with the last tower. The bruise is starting to heal, its greening color spread up and over her arm and shoulder to twist under her chin like the aurora overhead.

Finally, he pulls her aside to push another dose of shock wax at her. “You okay?”

She slugs it down and doesn’t even pretend to hide her grimace. “I’ve had worse. There’s always worse.”

“Kind of tired of seeing worse,” Erend points out.

“No kidding.” Aloy hands back the empty vial. “Did we ever get a Scrapper radar?”

“I keep trying.” There’s almost nothing the Banuk want in trade. Erend’s been pushing himself into every hunting party that leaves Song’s Edge, and the last one took down four Scrappers and a Watcher. He’d taken out the Watcher with a single brutal swing of his axe, and the kill had been sufficiently impressive that the hunters grudgingly offered him part of the salvage, but there hadn’t been anything more than useless slag. “They’re saying the Daemonic machines are impossible to bring down whole.”

He hasn’t wanted to tell her. He’s gone out a dozen times, but each time come back empty-handed. He can get every part they need but the one that’s most vital. He’s starting to think even without the Daemonism, the cold makes some parts more brittle. He’s been travelling with Aloy long enough that he _knows_ he can do better.

“There were bandits up near Stone Yield,” she says, naming an eastern Banuk camp he’s only heard of in passing. “They were using modified radar shells to guard their territory.”

“Dervahl wasn’t the first to think of it, then,” he says. “You didn’t get one?”

She shakes her head. “Too heavily fortified. I couldn’t risk going in.”

He tries not to feel a stab of disappointment. “We’ll figure something out.”

“That’s a problem for later.” Aloy cocks her head. “You know what I _really_ want right now?”

“Just say the word.”

Song’s Edge perches on a cliff in the middle of a very geologically active valley. Below the settlement, a series of hot springs stretch out in radiant pools. She gives them a significant look. “A _bath_.”

The weather’s cooperating for once, so they make their way down to one of the small, man-made pools. Most of the water is diverted from the icy river, mixing with just enough from the sulferous hot springs to make a natural spa. Erend's seen other people bathe down here, but...it's been too cold. It's still too cold, but if Aloy's going to do it, so is he, so he grits his teeth and strips off his clothes.

When they’re clean, they settle into the water, steam rising in lazy curls from the surface. Aloy tilts her head back against the stone, flushed and drowsy. Across the way, a trio of Banuk dyers stir hides stained with vivid clay. The bright oxide is echoed by the clear sky, the Icerasps stabbing upward amid the rolling snow-covered trees. The sun is low and blue, shattered across the ice in sharp, dark shadows.

“I forget how beautiful this place is,” Aloy says quietly.

“High fucking price,” he says.

“Yeah.” She tilts her head to look at him. “Do you think the baubles are still working in Meridian?”

He brings one knee up above the water to examine a wart. “You’d know better than me.”

“Too far away. It’s line of sight, and I lost it before we even hit Free Heap.”

Free Heap. “I used to think Free Heap was cold.”

She snorts. “Yeah.”

“This makes the Claim seem balmy.”

She closes her eyes again. “You ever think about going back?”

 _Only with you_ , he thinks, and-

This is it. This is the quiet moment, the silence between strikes, the eye of the storm. There’s never going to be a good time, and there’s never going to be a better time than right now. He’s going to do it. He’s going to open his mouth and say it.

He takes a deep breath. “Aloy, there’s something I need to-”

Right at that second, there’s a sudden splash, and one of the young hunters of the werak is slogging through the mud toward them. “Storm brewing up from the south,” he calls out, waving his arm. “Ourea says if we’re going to go, we have to go now.”

Aloy groans, reaching for her tunic.

 _No_ , Erend thinks with sudden panic. _No, this is the right time, this is it._ “Look,” he says, reaching for her arm. “I just-”

“We have to go,” she says tiredly, the relaxation bleeding from her body like heat into the frigid, clear air. “You’re coming, right?”

“Marry me,” he blurts out, but the words are lost in a sudden burst of steam from a nearby geyser, and _fuck_.

This isn’t what the world wants. He’s going to be in thrall forever, and yeah, that’s okay, but he wants to make her understand how committed he is. He can’t stand the way she leans on him with one arm and pushes him away with the other. He wants to scream that he’s here, that he wants her and wants to be marked by her.

Erend is brute force. His job is to hit things until they stop hitting back, and he is _not_ giving up.

He’s suddenly aware of how ridiculous he looks, a giant, hairy man dripping wet and shrivelled with cold, his clothes in a bundle in his arms. The young hunter is intently studying a nearby rock.

Aloy frowns in concern. “What’s wrong?”

“When we get back,” he makes himself say. “We should talk.”

She rocks back on her feet, blinking. There’s a long, awkward pause, and then she heaves a sigh and pushes a dripping hank of hair away from her face. “Yeah,” she says. “We probably should.”

“It’s not bad,” he tries. “I just-”

“When we get back,” she says.

“I love you,” he says. “You know that, right?”

“I know.” She offers him a tired smile. “Whatever’s in Longnotch - we’re almost done.”

Done. Fire and spit, he wants this to be done more than he wants to breathe. “Then let’s go.”

 

****

 

Preparations are made. Erend moves mechanically. He’s been dying to leave for weeks, but now that they’re finally packing up, now that they finally have access to the mountain, it feels like nothing. If nothing else, Song’s Edge is safe, and he has no idea what’s waiting for them further up the mountain.

 _Knowledge is your best weapon_ , Ersa reminds him in his head, but all he knows is that Frostclaws and Scorchers are things that exist, and if he closes his eyes, he can see the three biggest ones bearing down on Aloy in the snow.

The road to Longnotch, such as it is, is relatively clear, but the storm blows in as expected, and within hours, the world has gone dark and gray. The travelling party consists of himself, Aloy, Aratak, Ourea, and a handful of Aratak’s best hunters, and when the clouds descend, they’re all dependent on the glowing blue beacons placed every few lengths along the road. They stumble from beacon to beacon, shuffling through the drifts and trying to keep the stinging snow out of their eyes. Erend’s breath freezes on his scarf, and every few minutes he has to knock the ice away just to keep from suffocating. When they camp for the night, everyone huddles together for warmth, all allegiances forgotten.

It’s fucking _cold_.

The one mercy is that the snow effectively camouflages any trace of their passing. They’re unscathed until the last hour or so to Longnotch, when they crest a ridge and out of the sheeting snow, a flash of purple cracks through the air.

“Tower,” Aloy hisses, and everyone slams against a nearby rocky outcropping.

“Now what?” Aratak asks through clenched teeth. “You’re the werak chieftain. You tell us.”

She fumbles for her Focus, eyes going distant as she scans the area. “Two Watchers...no, three. I can take the tower.”

“Where do you need me?” Erend asks automatically, trying not to think of her clenched fingers.

“Watchers,” she says. “I’ll go for the heat sink.” Her lips thin. “I could take it out with a tearblast arrow, but this wind…”

“You’re the best at what you do,” he reminds her. “You and me both.”

“Erend-”

“Go,” he says. “I’m right behind you.”

The fight doesn’t last long. Aratak draws the Watchers in with an attention-grabbing explosive grenade, and Erend dives into the middle of the pack. For once, the snow works in his favor; he’s squinting against the stinging ice, but the Watchers’ lenses blaze like bonfires. They’re whirling and howling with frustrated anger, blind, and he’s right there to put them out of their misery. They’re tougher than their cousins further south, but the vulnerable parts are still in all the right areas, and he takes the first one down with a solid swing of his axe. The second falls to a hunter’s arrow, erupting in a shower of sparks like incandescent snowflakes.

Erend loses sight of the third Watcher for a moment, and is reminded with a solid blow to his back, sending him flying face-first into a nearby drift. There’s a long moment where there’s too much snow in his mouth to breathe, and then he’s melting it with a bone-shattering yell, using the momentum of his axe to launch himself back toward the tottering machine. He ends it with a quick upward jerk, and the beast’s head goes spinning off into the storm.

He’s got half a second to shake a kink out of him spine, and then he hears Aloy shout. The words are lost in the wind and he staggers in her direction.

“Stalkers!” she bellows. “Two Stalkers-”

Right at that moment, he’s blasted square in the chest by a blue flash of projectile darts. “Found ‘em!”

He’s straying into the edge of the tower’s energy field, and for one long, weightless moment, his muscles go empty and slack. He finds himself on his knees, his axe falling from limp fingers, and just as quickly as it came, the energy’s gone, and he’s back on his feet.

Amid the white of the storm, the dark energy swirls around the nearest Stalker, a malevolent bruise borne on the air like a caress. It only lasts a second, but it tells Erend exactly where his opponent is, and as soon as he’s back to himself, he leaps across the distance and brings his axe down on the machine’s spine. It wheels, losing its balance as its useless back legs slip in the snow. It scrabbles for purchase, striking out with huge jaws. Its form flickers briefly, but before it can completely disappear, Erend takes his axe and smashes it into the Stalker’s metal skull. There’s a hard gout of sparks as it dies, its tail lashing out and ripping a chunk of leather from his left pauldron.

It has been way too long since he’s had a good fight.

The last Stalker is somewhere nearby with one of the hunters. Erend can just barely hear the shriek of tearing metal over the howl of the storm, but right as he pivots to follow the sound, another sapping energy wave hits, and he goes down hard on his bad ankle.

Aloy isn’t done. He thinks about her fingers, and shoves himself up. If Aratak and his hunters can’t handle one lone Stalker after all their bluster, they deserve their fate. Aloy’s up somewhere with the tower, and that’s where he belongs.

He can’t see where it is. The snow’s too thick, and he suddenly has no idea where to go. Panic spikes in the soft space under his lungs, and before it can take hold, he picks a direction and pushes into the wind.

When the next wave washes over him, he knows he’s chosen right. This time, the urge to sleep is agony, and he bites down on his tongue to keep himself awake, the blood bright and thick in his mouth.

When he makes it to the tower, Aloy’s on her knees, fumbling with her spear. Smoke billows from somewhere up above, but the control points are still active and orange.  

“What can I do?” he yells.

She makes a vague gesture, and then his hands are behind hers, shoving the spear into the control point. Blue rages against orange, and just when he’s about to lose consciousness, they’re both blown backward by the force of the explosion. Metal screeches and bends. He shoves her out of the way just as the tower topples into the snow.

When he finally pulls the air back into his lung, it’s like choking on ice, and his entire body spasms at the cold. He makes himself move, wrapping himself around Aloy as she comes back to consciousness. “You okay?” His voice shakes.

She lets him take her hand, the leather black and faintly smoldering. “Can’t...feel my fingers.”

“I’ve got shock wax, we just need to find the group-”

She shudders, still caught in the twitching aftermath. “Went for the heat sink. Heat sink always works, but my _bow_ …”

She can’t draw a bowstring without her hand, and right now, her muscles are so stiff she can’t even spread her fingers.

“It’s getting worse,” she whispers. “It knows what I’m doing, Erend.”

 _Marry me_ , he thinks. _Marry me, and we’ll escape and never come back._

 

_****_

 

The rest of the day is a blur of smoke and snow. Somehow, they make it to Longnotch. There’s salvage and news to trade, but all Erend wants to do is sleep. The gray sky makes it impossible to tell the position of the sun, and even though he’s pretty sure it’s midafternoon, once he gets the tent assembled, he digs in for the night and bundles Aloy up beside him.

Being so close to the mountain keeps dredging up things he’s trying not to remember. A particular explosion or crack of crumbling rock sends him deep into himself, and he has to breathe hard against _rockets stone shrapnel flying blood on his hands blood in his hands-_

“Hey,” Aloy says, giving his shoulder a little shake. “You okay?”

They’re so close. The mountain rises up like the Spire, a monolith to a task neither of them really understand. He hadn’t known how to prepare then, either.

“I won’t be sad to put my back to this place.”

He wants her to agree. He wants her to be warm and open, to snuggle into the hollow of his neck and press her lips to the tender skin under his jaw. He wants to stand at the crest of the Grave Hoard and see the Embrace, and beyond that, the Sundom, stretching out in a wide swath of green and gold. He wants to take her to the watchtower in Meridian, to sit against warm stone and watch the brass roof vents spin. He wants to lay her back in their bed with a thunderstorm outside, the heat of the air echoed in the heat between their bodies.

It’s cold. It’s so cold. He feels shrivelled. There isn’t even any moisture left to freeze. He’s a dessicated hide, a piece of dry jerky, an altitude-mummified corpse. “I love you,” he says, but it feels more like a reminder than actual sentiment. He’s too cold to be anything other than tired.

“Yeah,” she says quietly. The word hangs in the space between them.

Outside, the wind continues to howl.


	74. Chapter 74

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :rubs hands together: Now we're finally getting to the bits I've had written for _months_.

 In the morning, the storm’s gone, leaving a sky bloody with smoke. There’s frost on his eyelashes and his face aches with cold. Aloy’s half of the bedroll is empty.

When Erend finally summons the herculean, soul-crushing effort to move, he finds her outside. She’s on her knees next to the useless little fire, her shortbow against her shoulder.

“Longbow’s out of the question,” she says. Her tone is frank, as if she’s talking about the weather and not her favorite weapon. She takes the shortbow’s string and draws it back, her arm shaking from the effort. “This is fine.”

“Aloy-”

“It’ll be close quarters,” she goes on, like he’s not even there. “The longbow’s useless anyway.” She squints down the shaft of an imaginary arrow. “I’ve upgraded the spear. It’ll be fine.”

He claps his hands, trying to regain some bloodflow. It doesn’t work. “When was the last time you had any shock wax?” She’s using her fingers like the last two are dead, and he can’t do anything other than prop her up with potions.

“No more.” She shakes her head, still focused on her bow. “It’s making me dizzy.”

First freeze rime, then fire kiln, and now shock wax. “Well,” he says. “Is there anything else we can overdose on? Seems like we’ve hit the big ones.”

She snorts.

One of the many things he hates about the cold is that no matter what he does, he feels like he’s slowly dying. At the Spire, he _had_ been dying, but it wasn’t like this. It had been fierce and hard and hot. Now, every movement is stiff and unwilling. He feels like he’s a hundred years old and still being hit with the control tower’s sapping energy. He really, really just wants to curl up in a snow drift and never wake up.

He makes himself eat instead.

As he gnaws on a flavorless piece of dried fish, Erend takes stock of his kit. His axe is sharpened and oiled, and he’s got all the supplies he can carry. He’s wearing so many layers under his gambeson that it’s almost hard to move, but he’s armored and as ready for battle as he can be.  

He’d been standing on the Spire on a morning like this, checking and re-checking because the world was about to end and he had nothing else to do. Anxiety bubbles up, and he firmly swallows it back. “So - up and over?”

Aloy’s checking the bladder of some wicked-looking Banuk contraption, and takes a breath at his question. “Erend...”

He knows what’s coming. He _knows-_

“No,” he says desperately. “You don’t get to say that. You _don’t_.”

“Don’t make this harder.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“I need you here.” Her tone is weary. “Can we not fight about this?”

“Fire and spit, I am _so_ fucking tired of being left behind,” he says fiercely. “You know I am.”

“ _Please_.”

He remembers what Ourea said about steel and its lodestone, and sets himself solidly in the snow. “No.”

She huffs in annoyance, the most Aloy-like warmth he’s seen from her in weeks. “It’s not about me, idiot.” She waves an arm up at the mountain and its seething cloud of smoke. Glowing cinders arc across the sky. “Whatever’s going on, whatever the Daemon is, it’s in there. I’m going to find it and stop it.”

“I can-”

“Erend.” Her expression softens. “This isn’t about you and me. I have to go because I’m the one who can open the doors. I need you to stay here because if I don’t come back, you’re the only one who can stop HEPHAESTUS.”

 _Oh_.

It suddenly feels like he’s taken a lungful of falling ash. She hasn’t been leaving him behind because she doesn’t trust him.

She’s been leaving him behind because she _does_.

“I can’t, not without you,” he blurts. She’s the one who carries the key in her body and the code in her staff. Erend is muscle, and muscle is nothing without bone to hold it up. “I don’t know anything, I can’t see it the way you can. I can’t-”

She puts one mittened hand on his chest, and he covers it with his own. “I need you to,” she says quietly.

That day in Meridian, he’d been drunk and shattered. He hadn’t had enough of himself to forge into anything worth being.

He’s strong. He’s sturdy. He’s fierce and he’s loyal. He’s a man who fights for a cause, for his king and his city and the woman he loves. When he swings his axe, it’s not out of an inebriation thinly disguised as battle-lust. He fights when he has no other choice, but when he does, he does so without hesitation., and right now, there isn’t a heartbeat of hesitation.

However this Daemonism works, whatever it is, it’s tied directly to HEPHAESTUS, and because of that, Aloy needs to suss it out. If there was an easier way she’d take it, but if the answers lie inside a volcano, that’s where she’s going to go.

HEPHAESTUS isn’t stupid. HADES had nothing more than its intellect in a shell and it had almost won. HEPHAESTUS is just as smart, but it’s harnessed the limitless ingenuity of the Cauldrons and every machine they spawn. HADES could only convince; HEPHAESTUS can engineer everything from a doorstop to an army and it’s learning from every move humans make. Erend and Aloy are rapidly approaching that unknown point when the subroutine can’t be defeated.

There’s so much fragility in what they’re doing. It goes against all sense and reason. They’re just _people_. They should being doing all the things people do: getting married, settling down, raising children. Grow old, die in bed, surrounded by loved ones. He wants that. He wants it so badly it tastes like blood in his mouth.

He doesn’t get that. Not right now. Right now, he’s steel before iron. Erend knows how to take a hit, and he knows when to keep going. He can’t waste time dreaming. If he doesn’t concentrate, there won’t _be_ a future for marriage and children. He isn’t tilling the field of a small homestead somewhere; he’s at the base of this infernal mountain, ice crusting in his moustache and sulfur clawing at the back of his throat.  

“Two minutes,” he makes himself say, and her eyes go soft and watery. It also earns him a damp chuckle, and then he’s tugged off his heels into the warmth of her kiss.

“Can we get moving?” Aratak grumbles from across the camp. “The Daemon doesn’t wait.”

“I love you,” Aloy says, her nose cold against Erend’s, and then she’s gone.

 

****

 

It’s a lot of waiting. He sharpens and oils his axe. He chats with Burgrend’s daughter, Varga, and immediately sees why the trader knew she and Aloy would be friends.

Erend thinks about Ersa. Everywhere he goes, there are women like her. There are women she could be, if he wasn’t looking closely and hadn’t buried her a thousand times in his mind.

Varga’s hair is even the same: dense, dark waves that take on the shape of her hat. “Dad said to keep an eye out for a Scrapper radar,” she says. “Said you hadn’t had any luck with salvage. I managed to coax one into my possession.” She winks at a young hunter across the camp, and the girl turns away, blushing. “Yours if you want it.”

“Really?” He’s all but given up. “How much? What will you take?”

Varga pushes the bundle into his arms. “No price. It was fun. Besides...” She grins. “Dad likes you. That’s enough for me.”

“That…” He has no idea what to say. Burgrend’s been the only person in Song’s Edge willing to talk to him, but Erend doesn’t know if that makes them friends. “That’s generous. Thank you.”

She leans over and nudges him with her shoulder. “Dad also said if I was smart, I’d steal you from Aloy.”

Erend chokes on his tea, making an entirely undignified noise.

Varga laughs. “I told him he was full of slag. Aloy would kill all three of us, and no offense, but you don’t have the right parts for my weapons.”

“None taken,” he manages. When he regains his composure, he can’t help himself. “You remind me of my sister.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yeah.” He can’t articulate everything that’s in his head. There’s Ersa, Ersa being dead and Ersa loving Avad, the secret life she’d lived without Erend ever knowing. There’s Aloy, who would have loved Ersa. There’s this complete stranger standing in front of him and making him lose his mind. “There’s a lot of things she’d like,” he says.

Varga cocks her head. “That’s an odd thing to say.”

“She’s-” He hasn’t said it. He’s made himself say it in his head, but he doesn’t know if he’s ever said it out loud. “Gone,” he finally says, because that’s a word he can stomach.

Standing in the shadow of the mountain is making him maudlin. Either that, or there are ice crystals growing in his brain. He’s pretty sure it’s both.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” There’s an awkward pause, and then Varga barrels ahead. “Did you see the thing I gave Aloy? I call it Forgefire.”

He lets the technical details wash over him. There’s an odd comfort in just nodding along to a discussion he doesn’t understand. It’s too cold to think, and Varga’s enthusiasm is warm and familiar.

“You let me talk your ear off,” she finally says, clapping a hand on his shoulder, just like her father. “Dad says I should be more mindful.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Erend says.

“That’s what _I_ think,” she laughs, turning to go. “Still. I’ve got work to do. By the way,” she calls over her shoulder, “don’t tell Dad I didn’t charge you. He’d be furious.”

“Not a word,” Erend promises, and takes the Scrapper radar back to the tent.

He has no idea what to do with it except wrap it up, but he lets himself spend a few long moments studying its architecture. He’s carried baubles often enough that he almost recognizes where this bundle of wires should come out, and where that chip should be set.

Aloy has to come back from this. Even if the scholars in Meridian have all the right diagrams, there’s still no way Erend can build a bauble. Carefully, he tucks its antennae into its hide bundle, and goes back outside to stare up at the mountain and wait.

 

****

 

It’s late in day when he hears the explosion. It starts as a dull rumble, and not half a breath later, the shockwave knocks him on his ass.

He sees the mountain fall. Not again. Not _again_.

She doesn’t even have her shimmering armor to keep her safe.

 

****

 

He’s from the Claim, born and bred. He carries the smoke from a dozen forges in his lungs. He remembers hills cleared of trees, their endless stumps like day-old stubble on a man’s chin. He knows how bare earth and snow move when there’s nothing to catch them.

The avalanche is one of the worst he’s ever seen.

Her name is ripped from his throat before he even has the air to scream. He’s trying to run, but arms hold him back. He can’t understand what anyone is saying, why they're telling him it's too unstable.

Everything is unstable. Life is tenuous and fragile. He knows. He _knows_.

 

****

 

The world is white. The sky is white. The blank howl in brain is white and so very, very empty.

 

****

 

He doesn’t remember running. He doesn’t remember the sting of ice crystals on his face. He doesn’t remember frozen breath cracking in his chest.

She’s on her feet by the time he gets there, but only barely. She raises one hand toward him, and then crumples back into the snow.

 _Don’t be dead_ , Erend thinks desperately. _Please, please, please don’t be dead._

This isn’t right. None of it is right. His hands are shaking. His entire body is shaking. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know-

Her eyelids flicker, snow on copper ore, snow on hardy moss. Her freckles are sparks, flying up into featureless white. “CYAN,” she says vaguely.

“Stay with me,” he manages. “Please-”

Weakly, she bats at his hand. “Have to go-”

“You _don’t_ ” he says fiercely. “Aloy-”

“Get me up.”

“You’re hurt, you-”

“ _Erend_ ” This, a tone he knows. This is the woman who grudgingly saved the world, the woman who looks at a problem and bludgeons it into submission. This is the woman who took over a werak because she wanted to climb a mountain.

He loves her so very, very much. “Okay,” he croaks. “Tell me what you need.”

“Help me up.”

He does. Fire and spit, he does. She sways, but she’s upright.

He doesn't know how she does this. He doesn't know how she _is_. She's a firestorm in human form, brushing off the laws of blood and nature like she's shedding loose snow. Aratak is somewhere behind them, motionless in the snow and surrounded by his kin.

“Now what?” Erend makes himself ask.

“Camp,” she says firmly, and yeah, he can do that.

When they get there, she immediately paws through their supplies. “What do you need?” he asks.

She shakes her head, slugging back one health tincture and then a second with only the barest pause to pop the skin's wax seal. She sits for a long time, eyes closed, stark-white and breathing hard through her nose. He waits.

“That one,” she finally grits out, pointing.

He doesn't dare protest, and hands over the distilled thaw omen.

She swallows it bit by bit, clenched hard against the obvious urge to gag. When it's empty, she holds out shaking hands, a silent request for help. Her gloves are shredded with char, so he gives her his own.

When the thaw omen starts to set in, she staggers to her feet. “I’ll meet you back in Song’s Edge,” she rasps.

“No, I’m coming with you-”

She puts one hand on his chest and pushes. It’s not enough to move him, but the intent is clear. “Ourea.” The word comes out shaking and wet. “ _Ourea_ \- I have to _go_ , Erend.”

Ourea didn’t make it out. He’d seen Aratak, bloodied and insensate, but Ourea wasn’t there.

“It's almost done,” Aloy chokes out. “Please.”

He doesn’t refuse her. He never can.

 

****

 

At the very least, there’s a nearby Strider herd, and she manages to snare one. He heaves her up onto its back and she sways in place, squinting into the blowing snow.

“It’s getting dark,” he tries.

“Have to go,” she mumbles, and leans against the Strider’s neck. “One more thing. Then Song’s Edge.”

Erend doesn’t have time to argue. She kicks her feet, and the Strider bursts into movement.

When she’s disappeared into the forest, he lets himself sag against a nearby tree. “Song’s Edge,” he repeats. “Got it.”

He doesn’t bother to wait for the rest of the Banuk. He cinches his gear into place and slings his axe across his back, and he runs.

Running doesn’t last long. It’s cold and he’s already beyond tired. He has just barely enough energy to make camp for the night before he passes out, and it takes every ounce of willpower to choke down some food. In the morning, he feels like he’s already dead.

Decisively, he tosses back the remaining thaw omen. It crawls down his throat like a living thing, thick and bitter. When it finally hits his blood in a sick lurch, he almost wishes he’d left it behind.

He makes it back to Song’s Edge by evening. News of Aloy’s success has apparently travelled even faster, because as soon as he’s in sight of the hot springs, a crowd of Banuk rush out to meet him.

He doesn’t care. He’s had no part in it. He’s desperately exhausted and balanced on the crest of hysteria. His feet are blistered and bleeding in his boots. “Is she here? Is she back?”

She’s not.

He doesn’t remember much after that.

 

****

 

When Erend comes back to consciousness, he’s still waiting.

Aloy isn’t here yet. Aratak and his kin have staggered into the settlement, but Erend has no time for them. He’s ice, ready to shatter at the slightest breeze.  Aratak leaves as soon as he arrives, giving only the vague explanation that he’s heading out to Ourea’s retreat.

That’s where Aloy is. She has to be. She’s there and she’s okay, and Erend is absolutely going to wait here like she asked him to.

So, he bandages up his feet and crawls into the back of his head. He properly assembles the tent. He gathers wood and makes a fire.  He unwraps the Scrapper radar and wipes away flakes of dried lubricant.

He has a conversation with Burgrend he’s not present for, and comes away with supplies. With the trader is a chatty little delver whose name Erend doesn’t catch, but who apparently knows Aloy very well.

“Saved each other’s lives, we did!” the delver announces. “You should have seen it. Eight Snapmaws - no, ten! And each the size of a barge, but we took ‘em down! And your girl, well, she’s a marvel, no doubt at all, no sir. There was salvage to be had, and of course I had it all figured out, but she seemed to need the practice, so I just stood back-”

“Enough,” Erend growls.

“Easy, friends,” Burgrend interjects. “No need for conflict.”

The delver leans into Erend, dropping his voice to what he clearly thinks is a conspiratorial whisper. “That girl is a wonder. Not one to go outside my tribe, myself, but if you’re not committed - and you should be, man like you, girl like her - but if you’re not, I’m certainly too old, but I’d _gladly-_ ”

Erend walks away.

After weeks of ignoring him, the Banuk are suddenly _delighted_ to have him in their midst. Shamans from other weraks seek him out to ask about his song, hunters gather to pepper him with questions about his adventures, and a painter even comes by to sketch him for some large cliff project. It might be genuine, but it’s too late for his forgiveness, and even if it weren’t, Erend is too brittle to grant any.

As much as he hates it, he ends up taking refuge at Burgrend’s fire. Another day passes without Aloy, and Erend chews the skin around his fingers until they’re raw and bleeding. He sleeps, but he can’t rest. He sits at the fire and nervously bounces his leg, staring off across the hot springs and wondering if he should have already gone out to find her.

She’d been in such rough shape. He shouldn’t have left her. He shouldn’t have let her go-

“Have a little something to calm your nerves,” the delver tells him, offering a small flask. His name is Gildun, and he’s the most self-inflated and irritating person Erend has ever met. “It’s a time-honored Oseram tradition, boy. You ought to know.”

Erend wants it. He wants it so badly his hands shake. “Not much of an Oseram these days."

“Pity.” Gildun tucks it away. “You know, this reminds me of the time I was delving in this amazing ruin. It was just south of Mainspring, and a friend of mine promised there would be treasures beyond my imagining. ‘Gildun,' he says, 'this will put you right for the rest of your days.' Turns out someone had gotten there before me - not my fault, you understand, what with the snow in the passes and a _truly_ unfortunate supper-”

Erend gets up and leaves.

He’s sitting on the edge of the cliff, marinating in agony, when a shout rises up in Song’s Edge. It gathers momentum, and then all the Banuk are on their feet, cheers and ululations echoing off the stone: the mountain is silent. The fog in the valley is collecting in thick ropes, but in the day’s last light, the sky above Thunder’s Drum is starting to clear, the last wisps of volcanic cloud leaning to the south as the wind blows it away.

Erend walks back to camp on watery legs. It’s over. Whatever Aloy did, the mountain’s gone calm and still. She’s coming back. She _will_ , and they’ll go home and get married and HEPHAESTUS will somehow fall-

“Mountain’s stopped!” Gildun exclaims. The delver holds out a tankard, white foam floating on golden brew.  “Come, come, my boy! Bottoms up - we’re alive!”

Erend doesn’t hesitate. He can’t. He doesn’t even try. He raises the tankard to his mouth and drains it in a single long swallow.

It’s nothing like a celebration.


	75. Chapter 75

He takes the drink with shaking hands. He drinks it down in a single, long swallow.

“There he is!” Gildun exclaims, grabbing the tankard to refill it. “Knew you were a proper Oseram!”

“Proper Oseram,” Erend echoes.

The ale is cool against his tongue, the bitterness familiar and beloved, and fire and _spit_ , he’s missed this. The taste of the hops, the glow of the fire, the loud, laughing men around him.

He knows he shouldn’t be doing this. He knows he’s making a mistake, but…it doesn’t quite feel like a mistake. Making a mistake would mean he feels bad, but he just feels nothing. He could justify this by saying it isn’t a bottle alone in his room, it’s a celebration with friends, but there is no justification. This is wrong and he knows it, but he simply doesn’t have the energy to resist.

The ale warms his belly, and like a second wind, he’s suddenly Charming Oaf, as if Charming Oaf never died. Gildun is _thrilled_ , and is far enough into his cups that he isn’t counting how many times he’s refilled Erend’s. “Warms the blood!” the delver cackles. “And in this frozen land without our women, we need all the warming we can get, don’t we, boys?”

It’s the first time he’s felt warm in weeks.

At the start of the evening, Burgrend watches Erend with a concerned eye, as if he wants to say something but isn’t sure he should, but a few drinks in and he’s as flushed and merry as the others.

Ale is fine. It’s weak. It has to be fine.

“And there’s _this_ ,” Gildun announces, bringing a glistening bottle from his bag. “I’ve been waiting for the proper moment, but this seems as proper as any, right?”

Erend’s heart sinks. It’s Oseram brew, bright and harsh and strong, and before he can stop himself, his mouth is on the bottle’s lip, and he knows he’s completely lost.

****

 

Erend is drunk.

He hates it. The world spins and he can barely see. The sloppiness swells in his throat, and the thought of having to wait it out until he's sober is excruciating. If he drinks more, it's just going to make it worse, but if he drinks more, maybe he won't care.

He cares. There isn't enough alcohol in the entire world to numb him like that, and there isn't enough alcohol in camp for him to try.

There was a time when he loved to black out. It was a hard stop on the machinery in his brain, and even if he didn’t remember the silence, he’d known it was there. It was a gift he’d given himself, those few hours of blank nothing. It was time passed in the best possible way.

He’d wake up not knowing the day. He’d miss important tasks. Ersa would come crashing into his apartment and he’d shrug into Charming Oaf like he’d shrug on a favorite shirt. He’d duck his head and grin and play Idiot Brother to its fullest, and everyone would eventually roll their eyes and move on. He’d thought it was funny at the time, but then Ersa died, and he realized it was never funny at all.

He wants to black out right now. He doesn’t want to remember this moment, but he’s damn well going to. He doesn’t know his tolerance anymore. He has no idea how much it would take, and he’s afraid to find out.

He deserves this pain. He knows how to take a hit, and Ersa always told him it wasn't his fault, but this time it is. He can't pretend otherwise.

What's he going to tell Aloy? What's he going to _say?_ He can't squirm out of this, and...he doesn't want to. Once, he'd have said anything to displace the shame, but oddly, he isn't embarrassed. He's drunk and sad and _tired_ , and more than anything just fiercely disappointed in himself. It's heavy and draining, a particular emotion like raw meat that only comes from losing himself this way.

She’s not here. She’s not here to stop him, and she’s not here to make him want to stop. She’s out there pursuing...something. He doesn’t even know what. She is _not_ dead. Where is she, where _is_ she-

The others are asleep, comfortably sprawled in furs and piles around the dwindling fire. His body is loose and warm, and if he lets himself, he’ll slump down with them. Instead, he’s still awake, leaning with his elbows on his knees and staring into the coals. He rolls the bottle between his hands, an idle motion he knows well. He should make himself enjoy this. He should watch it sparkle in the firelight, the way it glows like embers.

This used to be his flame. He’s always been an addict, always a moth, and no matter what he does, he’s going to burn. He just has to choose the way he wants to go. This way isn’t it. It never has been. He’s a moth to flame, he’s steel to lodestone. He’s never claimed a path for himself, but this isn’t it.

If he were a better man, he’d pour the brew on the ground. If he were a better man, he’d watch it dribble into the snow like piss. Instead, he’s his father’s son, and if this is going down like piss, it might as well make its way through his body first.

This is the last time, he tells himself. He should savor it, because this is the _absolute_ last time, but he’s said that before. He’s said it a thousand times and the words are all empty air. They mean nothing. It’s the last time tonight. It’s the last time this week.

Last, last, last.

The bottle is empty. He doesn’t remember the final swallow. There isn’t even an aftertaste, just sour staleness in his throat. He finished the bottle, and he didn’t even notice. How is he supposed to fight something like that, something as instinctual as breathing?

Once, he’d found half a bottle under their bed, and he didn’t drink it. He’d held himself like stone until Aloy came and rescued him. Tonight, he hadn’t even _tried_. This was a choice. He didn’t have to sit down. He didn’t have to hold out his hand and wrap his fingers around that first tankard, but he _had_.

Proper Oseram?

Ersa got them out and never spoke their clan name again. If Oseram was a tattoo, he'd have dug out of his skin. If there was a way to change his face and skin, he'd do anything to cut the steel from his bones.

There isn't a way to be anything else. No one gets to exist outside their tribe. Aloy is still unmistakably Nora, even outcast and wearing scavenged, mismatched armor. Erend could avoid the Claim for the rest of his life, could have his body burned on a Carja pyre or given to a Snapmaw. He can take off his armor and move into the Forbidden West, but he will always be Oseram. He will always carry the assumption of his hard-working, hard-drinking tribe in everything he does.

It should be choking, but his body is too loose for the anxious claws to grab hold.

Aloy isn’t back. He wants her and needs her, and he wants her to never see him ever again. He loves her more than anything, and he’s betrayed her as much as he’s betrayed himself.

More than. She won’t hear it, but she’s the only reason he’s made it this far. He owes her everything, and he’s sitting alone by a fire in a land he hates with an empty bottle he hates.

He doesn't know what he's going to tell her. She's out there bleeding to save the world, and he's sitting here willingly throwing himself away.

If she'd just _let_ him-

It's exactly like Pitchcliff. He's killing himself trying to be useful, but she's blind to his efforts.

If he's completely honest with himself, he's angry and so fucking _frustrated_ with her. She's left him here in camp for weeks without hardly a word of explanation. It was one thing for him to wait during the build-up to the battle at the Spire, but she came back. She _stayed._ She’s showed him Zero Dawn and Eleuthia and the place Rost is buried. Now, she barely even _speaks_ to him, and when she does, it’s only to leave him alone in the snow. She took him to the mountain and made him watch as it crashed down around her.

Where _is_ she?

He's lonely. He misses her, even during those brief nights she’s actually been by his side.

He'd thought she'd trusted him, but maybe she hasn't, and it's taken the harshness of the Cut to lay it all bare. She said she needs him to stop HEPHAESTUS, but that’s a cute little falsehood neither one of them truly believe. What’s he going to do? Throw his axe? He isn’t a tinkerer and he isn’t a delver. He’s not a key, not a tool, nothing. He’s a weapon, a thick slab of muscle that exists only to be hit.

If she dies, there’s nothing left. He’s got the Vanguard, but they don’t need him anymore, not really, and if she doesn’t come back, maybe he won’t either. He’ll just wander off into the night and let the foxes eat his bones. Meridian will wonder, and then Meridian will forget-

He doesn’t want that. He wants Aloy. He wants a family and he wants to make one with her. He wants to walk through the streets of Meridian with a child on his shoulders and his wife smiling on his arm. He wants stupid fights and cozy evenings, and something like Itamen giggling and filling the room with mirth.

 _Fuck_ , he wants that. The fire blurs in his vision, his lungs clenching with a desperate ache.

He’s drunk and miserable, and he _loves_ her, but she's not here. Nothing’s here, not even him.

 

****

 

He’s going to find her. He’s going to apologize, dammit. She shouldn’t have left him here. She shouldn’t have been so fucking stubborn, and he’s going to go find her and _marry_ her-

He’s going-

He’s just going to be sick.

 

****

Erend is drunk. He’s _so_ drunk. He’s tried to puke it all up, to clear it from his body, but it’s already in his blood. There's no way to disguise how drunk he is, and he hates himself so much right now that he doesn't even bother to deny it.

It's late when there’s a burst of commotion below the settlement. The sky is clear, the stars sharp as ice as the green curtain of light slowly shivers across the black, and the shouting comes like a grenade from below. He tries to get up, but his legs won’t hold him, and he slumps back down. Instead, he waits - he waits, he always waits, it’s all he knows how to do - and feels the minutes slip by like soft, heavy breaths.

Aloy finally appears out of the darkness, pale and emotionless as a corpse. He’s so drunk, it takes several long, painful heartbeats before he realized she’s actually _real._

“Hi,” he says, his eyes welling up again.

He wants there to be noise. He wants one of them to yell, because there’s too much emotion in his chest and he’s too drunk to do anything more than cry. He wants her to scream at him because he deserves her anger, and her screaming means she’s right here, she’s right _here_. He wants to run to her, to pick her up and swing her around in his arms, but he can’t even stand.

She doesn’t yell. She doesn’t even _react._  She just stares, an awful emptiness in her face, and limps into the tent without a word.

Fire and spit. He wants to die.

 

****

 

He makes himself stay awake until the buzzing in his head turns into a hard, throbbing pressure. This is the consequence, and he makes himself take the hit. He scrubs snow across his face, letting the icy pain overwhelm the nausea.

She doesn't talk to him in the morning. She wordlessly eats and then goes back to bed.

He hates himself.

He doesn't know what to do. He oils his gambeson and concentrates on his headache. The others wake up and stagger around. Gildun is jovial and oblivious, nattering on about his grandmother's sure-fire hangover cure that he just _can't_ find the ingredients to.

“You okay, son?” Burgrend asks quietly.

Erend makes himself leave before he punches someone.

 

****

 

It’s like this for three days. She doesn’t even acknowledge him. She’s barely walking, her right hand clenched into itself, her hair stiff with matted blood. Most of her bruises are greening, but there’s still a spatter of red in one of her eyes, bright as ichor on new snow.

He’s dying to help, to apologize, to do _anything_ to chase the excruciating blankness from her face, but the moment he reaches out, she immediately turns around and walks away.

She sleeps, but when he comes to keep her warm, she carefully keeps a hand’s distance between them beneath the furs.

She’s alive, he repeats to himself. She’s alive. That’s the only thing that matters.


	76. Chapter 76

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tag change, kids.

After four unbearable days, the silence breaks. He's sitting away from camp, his legs dangling motionless into the canyon below when Aloy eases down beside him.

“I'm sorry,” Erend says, but it isn't enough. He’s been killing himself trying to think of ways to apologize, but he knows nothing will ever enough.

She doesn't answer.

He wants to explain it, to somehow take her pain and carry it with his own – he’s good at carrying and he’s good at being in pain - but nothing is going to chase the empty cold from her face. He wants to say he shouldn’t have done it, but they both already know that. He’d known he was in the wrong spot and he’d known he should have said no, and he’d still done it anyway.

Some of the times he’s slipped, it’s felt involuntary. The fight against the bottle in the apartment had been a physical force. He’d held himself down like a raging Behemoth. Muscle fails eventually and he’d have lost, but it would have still counted for something.

This was him walking straight into trouble without even _trying_. He’d taken the tankard when it was offered, and then he’d taken the bottle. There wasn’t a fight. He’d lost before he’d even swallowed. He’d _chosen_ to lose, and worst part is that he’d chosen to lose right when she’d almost died trying to win.

Aloy wipes across her eyes with her palm. “I thought you had it,” she finally says.

He can’t answer to that.

“I’m so _angry_.” A muscle at her jaw trembles. “What the fuck, Erend?”

He can’t say it had been an experiment, because he’d known how it would go. He can’t say he’d wanted to see if he’d escaped the pattern, because Erend _knows_ the pattern: on rare occasions, his father had seemed completely normal for weeks, but like a slipped gear, he’d abruptly revert back and been worse than ever. He can’t say it was because he was desperate.

He can’t say it’s going to be the last time, because right now, neither of them will believe it.

“What the _fuck_ ,” she repeats.

This land is the most dangerous place either of them have ever been. The Banuk call it the Cut because that’s what it _is_. It takes everything extraneous and slices it away. It injures down to the bone. The only mercy is a swift end, and even if Erend is at his absolute best, one wrong move will be his last. The luck in this world is balanced firmly against him, and even if he stays within the relative safety of the camp, there are still a thousand chances for him to die. He can walk away to piss and lose his path in the snow. He can break thin ice and fall into a crevasse. He can slip and go tumbling off a cliff. He can take one step into a hot spring and boil alive.

Even if he’s perfectly clear-headed, the Cut will take him like a gleeful conquest, and he’s been here for weeks so he _knows_ that. Being drunk delivers him like a boar on a platter.

Stupid. He is _so_ stupid.

Erend being dead isn’t even the part that matters. He’s living for more than himself. Aloy grew up alone, and every time she’s reached out, the world has slapped her back with blood and pain. She doesn’t touch anyone, but she touches him. She keeps everyone at arm’s length, but she’s held him close. He is the only exception to all of her rules, and if he screws this up, it’s going to destroy her.

She won’t stop being herself. She won’t stop asking questions and searching for the answers. She’ll just walk away into HEPHAESTUS’s wilderness and never come back out.

She’ll die like a snuffed candle, and it will be entirely his fault.

He drops his face into his hands and scrubs at his head. He wants to ask how he can make it up to her, but this isn’t the kind of thing that can be atoned for. He gets no redemption for this. She has the weight of the world – the _future_ of the world – resting on her shoulders. He’d said he’d always have her back, but he’s just proven he _doesn’t_ , and she can’t carry them both. She’d handed him part of the weight at the mountain, and he’s thrown it back in her face.

He’s fucked up so badly.

“I don’t even know where to start,” Aloy says hoarsely.

Erend wants to die.

“Did you think I wasn’t coming back?”

He can’t answer. His throat is too thick with shame.

“Elisabet,” she goes on. “Elisabet gave _everything_ to save us. GAIA made me to do the same thing, and Erend, I thought for sure I was meant to do the same thing for HADES.”

 _No_. No, no no-

“I didn’t. I didn’t, and now I’ve got more work to do. Maybe it was the same work. Maybe I’ll die for HEPHAESTUS, but if I don’t, there are seven other subroutines. They’re all chaotic, and they’re just getting worse. Look at the odds. There’s no way I don’t die for this, Erend. Not when I’m her.”

“You’re so much more than her,” he croaks.

“I don’t get to be,” she says. “I want to. I _want_ …” She straightens up. “Are you sober now?” she demands. “Because you’d damn well better be.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Dry as hell.”

“I need you here for this, Erend.”

“Then _let_ me be here!”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Her hands are shaking, her knuckles hard and white in her lap. “You think you know why I’m angry,” she grits out, “and you _don’t._ ”

He knows how to take a hit. He knows what it feels like to be trapped under an inevitable, crushing blow, the animal panic that swells in his throat in the breath before the strike. He knows what it’s like, and he breathes against the inevitable.

“I’m _angry_ ,” she repeats, and then fire and spit, she’s _crying_ , hot furious tears that she’s desperately hiccupping back. “I went looking for my mother, and I don’t have one. I never had one and I wasn’t even born, and I’ve never thought- I _never_ thought-“

She’s hedging. _Aloy_ , who bludgeons her way through every conversation she’s ever had, who’s as subtle as a cannon, who asks questions like a charging Trampler…

Aloy is _hedging_.

He doesn’t know what to think, and he suddenly can’t breathe. It’s terrifying on a level he’d never thought possible.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she says desperately. “I don’t know how to- I didn’t ever _think_ -”

He tries to swallow, and fails. “We’ll figure this out, we’ll-”

She flares like a Watcher, boiling red and ready to strike. “ _Shut up_. Just- shut up, Erend. Shut up and let me talk.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay. Yeah. Sorry.”

There’s a long, hot moment, the only sound the hard rasp of her breathing. “You’re not your father,” she finally says “You keep saying that, but...have you ever thought about what kind of father you’d actually be?”

He has. He _has_. He thinks about it between every heartbeat. The hearth, the family, sparks and stars and red hair: it’s tucked in the back of his mind, glowing like a steady light he’s afraid to look directly at. He thinks about it _all the fucking time_ , and every single time he finds himself lacking. “Yeah,“ he croaks. “ _So much_. And I can’t- I don’t _want_ to be my father, Aloy, I _don’t_ , and I’m so-“ he makes himself say it, “ _afraid._ ”

She’s holding herself like she’s braced for killing impact.

Hearth and heat and light and say it, Erend, _marry me marry me_ just fucking _say it_ \- “I keep thinking that maybe - just _maybe_ \- and it would be different if I had the chance. I’d _make_ it different.”

He means it, means it with every drop of his blood. It fills his lungs like air, fierce determination mixed with blinding terror. He’s made every bad decision he could possibly make, _knowing_ the whole time he’d betray everything he wants. He hates himself, and the worst part is that he knows he’ll fuck up. He’s flawed and he’s damaged. He’s the last withering tendril of a choking vine, and he absolutely shouldn’t-

“You’d make it different?”

It doesn’t mean anything, not after what happened. Words are nothing. “I don’t know how.”

“You don’t know _how?_ ” She bares her teeth. “You know exactly how. Either you’re him or you aren’t, and that’s a choice you have to make.”

He can say that he's always his father's son, but it suddenly feels like another excuse. “I know.”

“It’s a choice,” she repeats.

“It's not like that-”

“It has to be, Erend.” She clenches her teeth. “You _have_ to choose.”

“I keep choosing! I keep choosing over and over-”

“Erend.” There’s something in her voice, a damp, alarmed tremble, and his stomach drops into his feet. “I mean right now.”

“What?”

Aloy just looks at him, clenched in on herself, her eyes flooding and red. “I didn’t think I was coming back,” she whispers. “I really, really didn’t, but I’m here and I still…”

He wants to touch her. He wants to take her face in his hands and press her against his chest and cry and cry and cry, but she’s leaning away, and he can’t make himself cross the frigid space between them.

She swallows hard and wipes her eyes. He can see her arranging herself, tucking away all the upset parts of her and forcing them back into her chest with her arms. “This has to happen,” she says mostly to herself, as if she’s steeling herself, as if there’s some awful truth she can no longer avoid.

No. _No_ -

He’s losing her. He’s _losing_ her, the space between their bodies like two rivers suddenly diverging. This is worse than the moment when the mountain fell, worse than the moment when the _other_ mountain fell, and he can’t feel enough of himself to scream-

He sees her take a breath. He sees her lick her lips and square her shoulders. He sees her mouth prepare and form the sounds. “If you- if you’re going to make it different, if you’re going to be better than your father,” Aloy says, “ _right now_ is when you need to start proving it.”

The words bob on the surface of his brain, meaningless, and then abruptly start to sink.

Erend’s soul leaves his body.


	77. Chapter 77

Erend’s father wasn’t alone. There were people in the Claim just as drunk, just as violent and just as mean. There were many people who weren’t, people who kept their fires burning and their children close.

Erend didn’t know any of them.

He didn’t know anyone at all. It was the three of them against his father – Ersa, Erend, their mother – until it was suddenly two, and that drafty house became his entire world. He had Ersa, and he had  _only_  Ersa. They had no one and nothing.

He knows how to take a hit. He knows how to hate himself. He knows how to wait, and he knows how to be cold. He knows the clawing emptiness of want.

He doesn’t have any context for _this_.

 

****

 

“Right now,” he echoes. There isn’t any air in his lungs. There isn’t any air in the entire world.

“I thought you _had_ it,” Aloy says. “It’s been so long, and I thought that if I could just get through this-“ she gestures at the mountain in the distance and its absent crown of clouds. “I thought maybe we could-”

Erend’s brain is still floating somewhere above his skull and all his organs have floated up with it. His stomach is in his throat, clogging any words he might say.

“And I come back to _this,_ ” she says miserably. “There’s the Derangement and the subroutines and the Daemon, but you said you had my back. You said you had my back, and _fuck_ , Erend, I was starting to believe you.”

“Aloy, no-“

“I want this,” she goes on, burying her hands in the fox fur of her hood. “Elisabet said she didn’t have time. I don’t think I have time either, and I shouldn’t, but I _want_ \- I didn’t know I wanted this, but I-I think I want this, Erend, and if you-” she's watching him, waiting for his reaction, scanning his face defensively coiled and jaw clenched. “If you can’t have my back, say so.”

“If you’re saying what I think you’re saying,” he croaks out, “I need you to say it. I need to hear it.”

She stops, a stone hanging in the air as it skips across a lake. “...seriously?”

“Keep talking,” he says. “I’m listening. I just. Please.”

She blinks, but sets her jaw and grimly forges ahead. “I know we didn’t mean - I never _thought_ \- but I’m late, I’m so _late_ , there’s no way it’s anything else...” She takes a huge, shuddery breath. “Erend, I’m pregnant. Is that it? Is that enough? Does that somehow make more sense than anything I’ve just said?”

His body is moving before he can think, the hot swell of emotion in his chest sending him up and up like a Stormbird launching from its perch, and then immediately, dizzily down. _This_ \- this is like that day on the butte when she’d lifted her bow and the entire world roared in triumph. This is the day she’d found Ersa’s trail. This is the day they’d defeated Dervahl and the day they walked away from Meridian. This is the day he discovered her freckles and the night _I love you_ couldn’t be contained. This is unexpected, this is blinding, this is-

“Say something,” she says. “Erend, please say something.”

He opens his mouth, and bursts into tears.

 

****

 

When he can breathe, he makes himself talk. “You're sure,” he says, because if this isn't real he's going to shatter.

“Yeah,” she says. “Pretty sure.”

“How…?”

“Don't you dare ask me how,” she snaps. “You know exactly how.”

It sounds so much like herself that he laughs, a sharp, near-hysterical bubble of sound. “And...you're okay?” He doesn't know if he's asking if she's okay, if she's okay with this, or both.

There’s a beat of silence. “I honestly don’t know.”

“What does _that_ mean?” His voice cracks on the question. “What-”

“It means _I don’t know_! I don’t have any idea, Erend. I’ve been doing what I need to do to _stay alive_ , and I have absolutely no idea what that does to- to things. I don’t know how anything is supposed to feel. All I _do_ know is that it’s not...I don’t think it’s gone. I would have felt it, I would have...I’d have bled a lot, and I haven’t, and that has to mean _something_.”

This is happening.

“We’re gonna have a baby,” he whispers. “We _are_.” He isn't his father, but he _might_ be, and months of nightmares and blood and unquenchable ache converge all at once. He thinks of the shaman, of stars in newborn eyes, of sparks and heat and light. He makes himself concentrate on the fire that will burn all the poison away.

She wipes at her eyes and nods. “Yeah.”

“...shit.” It’s not an expletive. It’s barely even a word. It’s a single syllable, the exhale of a bellows as it comes to rest. It’s the only thing he can think to say, because he really, really can’t think at all.

She blows air out of her cheeks in agreement, and for a long moment, there’s nothing to add.

Out in the valley, the dyers are adding a new batch of freshly cured hides to their pools. A flock of geese explode away from a sudden geyser, and a goat makes its path across the treeline.

This isn’t real. It can’t possibly be real. Nothing he’s done in his entire life makes him worthy of this.

“I love you,” he says.

Aloy turns her head. She’s still crying, slow, silent tears that she keeps trying to sop up with the cuffs of her parka. “That’s not enough,” she says.

“What is enough?”

“I don’t know.”

 _Marry me_ , he thinks, and he’s suddenly terrified that the time for that question is long past, but if it’s going to happen, if it should have happened already, dammit, all he has is now. He scrubs at his face. “Look, I don’t- if this isn’t- I don’t want to hold you to anything. I don’t want to tie you down, but-”

“You...don’t…” She stares at him for five agonizing heartbeats, and then explodes to her feet like a Longleg, a burst of sound and force that almost knocks him on his ass. “There you go _again_ , making my decisions without even _asking_! How many times do we have to talk about this, Erend?”

“I don’t-”

“MAYBE I WANT TO BE TIED DOWN,” she roars. “DID THAT EVEN OCCUR TO YOU?”

He blinks.

“No one has ever wanted me,” she snaps, color rushing to her face and bringing ruddy anger to the greening bruises. “No one ever wants me to _stay_. Even Rost-” there’s a furious hitch- “every day of my life he told me the tribe was where I belonged. At the Proving, he told me I could never see him again. I’d be a brave and he’d still be outcast. He loved me and he pushed me away and then he _died_.” Her hands go to fists. “Maybe I _want_ someone to claim me. Not as the Anointed, not as Elisabet, _me_. Just me. Maybe I want someone, just _once_ , to say they want me to stay, and Erend-” her voice is thick with furious tears. “I thought if anyone would say it, it would be _you_.”

“I have,” he croaks. “Every single day. I love you.”

“There’s always a _but_ _!_ I love you, Aloy, _but_ I don’t want to tie you down. I want you here, _but_ if you leave, I won’t protest. Don’t make my decisions for me, but _fuck_ , Erend. Make a decision of your own!”

“I...” Fire and spit, he’s going to say this. He has to. If he doesn’t, he will absolutely lose her and the small miracle sparked inside her, and the hearth and all the heat and life and air in the entire world. “Look, Aloy...if we were anyone else, I’d have gone back to the Claim months ago. I’d have dragged you in front of the ealdormen and I’d have done anything to win your hand. You know why I haven’t? Because you’re more than that.” He takes a breath. “I’m not my father. I don’t want to be, but I fucked up. I know I did, and I can’t promise- ”

“Not your father isn’t good enough,” she says fiercely. “Be yourself. Be _Erend_.”

“Be-” He feels his blood go to ice in his veins, and he can’t decide if it’s fury or terror. He’s gotten better, he _has_ , but being Erend still feels like he’s walking on a slippery glacier. It’s hard enough not being his father - and on the heels of that night, that _stupid_ night, how can he possibly-

But then he’s standing up and his mouth opens and the words start pouring out, and once he starts, he can’t make himself stop. “Be Erend? Fine: _marry me_. Marry me, Aloy. You’re all I’m ever going to want, you and this kid and ten more. I don’t want two minutes of your time, I want _all_ your minutes, every single one of them from now until we die, and I swear on the forge or the mothers or the sun itself, I swear I hope I die first, because I can’t handle a single one of those minutes without you.”

She’s just looking at him, breathing hard and wary. The green of her eyes is almost lost in the swollen flood.

He shoves aside fear and frustration and keeps going. He knows how to take a hit, but he’s been swallowing back hits for so fucking long, and this, _this_ is what he’s been dying to say. He’s winding up with all the energy of a skull-shattering blow, but it’s not a blow. It’s him, it’s Erend, it’s words he can’t hold back. “You want to stand and argue our case in front of the ealdormen? We can leave tonight. You want to ask your stupid matriarchs if they’ll bless their Anointed and her Oseram? I’m already packed. The Carja? You want to do that? We can stand in the center of Meridian and I will announce to the entire Sundom you’re the only thing I’ll ever want. I will stand on this rock _right now_ and yell so loud they'll hear me in Ban-Ur. We can...eat one of each other's fingers, or however the hell it happens with the Tenakth. I will follow you to the Utaru lands or the Forbidden West or anywhere else you want to go, and we can do it every way that’s ever been invented. We can delve until we figure out how Elisabet would have done it.”

He takes a breath, bringing one hand to his heart. “This is me. This is what I want, Aloy. This, right here. You and me and this kid and whatever else the world throws at us. I don’t know what I’m doing, but by the forge, I’ll figure it out. Being with you is the most important thing I’ve ever done and I don’t ever want it to end.”

Months and months - and it _has_ been months - it’s been urgent as heartburn and aching like cold in his chest. Now, it hangs naked in the air between them, a fragile, ephemeral cloud.

There’s a long moment of heavy silence, and he can’t- she needs to _say something_ -

She punches his chest hard enough to knock the wind from his lungs. “Why the _fuck_ didn’t you say that earlier, Erend?”

“I _tried_ -”

“You suck at trying!”

“I’m saying it now!” he snaps.

“Only because I forced you into a corner!”

“You _didn’t_. Do you know how much I’ve thought about this, Aloy? You and me, us and a kid, us and the best home we can make in this stupid, crazy world? There’s never been a good time. There’s always been machines and wars and a hundred other things, an it seemed like it wasn’t something that should be interrupted. I’ve thought about it every single day, every single breath since the day we met.”

“You _weren’t_ -”

“Since Daytower,” he says fiercely. “I was going to ask you then, but we ended up in the Embrace and it wasn’t right, and then we were back and it wasn’t right, and then everything was crazy, and it was _never_ right. There was never a good time, because there was never gonna _be_ a good time. And now we’re _here_ , and the Cut is the worst place I’ve ever been, and I thought I was losing you-”

“I’ve been _sick_ ,” she snaps. “I can’t even _explain_ how sick I’ve been-”

“You could have tried!”

“What was I going to say? _I think I’m pregnant_?”

“That! _Exactly_ those words, Aloy.”

“What would you have done? What would _we_ have done?”

“The same thing we’re doing right now!” he yells. “We _panic_ , and then we talk it out!”

“Fine!” She sets her jaw. “I’m pregnant.”

He knows, he _knows_ , but that still doesn’t stop his vision tunnelling to black. “When’d you know?” he makes himself ask. “Er, how?”

She shakes her head. “Later than I should have. I didn’t realize how late I was until I was _really_ late-”

“You didn’t _say_ anything,” he says plaintively. “I could have- I dunno-”

She shrugs, and there’s so much resignation there that he aches. “What were you going to do? What was _I_ going to do? We needed to be here.” She squints and frowns. “Tell with a straight face you wouldn’t have lost your mind.”

He can’t, because he’s losing his mind _right now_ , and frankly, he never, _ever_ wants to get it back. “And-” he has no idea how to ask this. He has no idea how to ask about _any_ of this. “How long’s it been? Since...you know.”

“I counted back, and I think before the wedding,” she says quietly. “I...asked Ourea. I had to. I just wasn’t thinking, and then she made some offhand comment that made me realize how _long_ it had been.”

It’s an impossible amount of time. “That’s almost...three months,” he croaks. “ _Three months_ , Aloy-”

“I didn’t know what to _do_ ,” she retorts.

“You do. You and your herbs-”

“I _don’t_ _!_ ” Aloy shouts. Her voice cracks with nervous fury, bouncing off the trees with enough volume to send a squirrel scrabbling through the boughs above. “Everyone thinks I know everything, but I _don’t_ , Erend. I know _just enough_ , and apparently that makes me the expert.” The tears haven’t stopped, huge and bright as they course down her cheeks. “I didn’t know what to _do_ . I had to face the Daemon and Thunder’s Drum and then the werak, and on top of everything, I had to be _late_ , and I just...couldn’t do anything. I thought- I thought the world just make the decision for me.” She stabs a balled fist at the mountain. “All of this. All of _this_. All of this, and on top of that, I stopped bleeding, and I couldn’t handle it. I just- I couldn’t. I don’t know any way to get rid of it that wouldn’t have just about killed me, and there wasn’t anyone I could have asked!”

“Someone here, a healer-”

“Tell me how that would have ended!” she snaps. “‘Hi, I need to climb your mountain and by the way, I’m pregnant.’ That was _not_ going to work!”

“You don’t know-”

“I _don’t_ know! And I couldn’t risk it!”

“You could have told _me_.”

“You wouldn’t have let me go either!”

“I DON’T MAKE YOUR DECISIONS FOR YOU!” His legs start to give out, and he sinks back down onto his boulder. “I know this needed to be done, Aloy. I _know_. I could have _helped_ ,” he tries. “I could have had your back.”

“I could _smell_ how well you’ve had my back,” she snarls.

He’s so furious and wounded that he almost argues - _yeah, I fucked up once, but you've_  lied _to me for three whole months -_ but it’s not equivalent. Not at all. He’d made a bad decision knowing exactly what it meant. She’s been running scared under an impossible amount of pressure, desperately triaging a dozen lethal threats.

“Marry me,” he says quietly. “Please. I mean it.”

She drops back down beside him, pushing her head into her hands. “I’m so tired, Erend. I’m tired and I don’t feel good, and I want the world to fucking save _itself_ so I can just go home.” She looks over at him. “Why isn’t anything ever _easy_?”

He wants easy. Fire and spit, he wants easy, and he's never wanted it more than he does at this moment. They run, the three of them - the  _three_ of them - and find some cave and hide, but the world will still end, and because she's Aloy, she won't walk away. They're in too deep to feign ignorance, and running now is the equivalent of committing genocide.

He wants to touch her, but she's very carefully keeping distance between them. 

“What else needs to be done here?” he asks. “CYAN, HEPHAESTUS, what?”

“CYAN doesn’t know where HEPHAESTUS is, and the daemon didn’t leave any obvious signature.” She shakes her head. "I downloaded some data, but I can't tell if it's anything worthwhile. This whole thing has been useless."

"Not useless."

She shoots him a damp scowl. 

He wants to sink his hand into the bright comfort of her hair, but everything she is is wrapped up in fur and bound with hide. Meridian, he thinks. They need Meridian, if only to peel back the layers and breathe. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” she says miserably. “I really, really don’t. Not about the subroutines, not about...things.” She doesn’t look at him. “I needed to know what you’d say.”

“You didn’t know?”

“No. I didn’t.”

He lets a breath fill his cheeks. All this time, he's felt like he's been wearing it like he'd used to wear his drink, the want leaking out of every pore. “Not gonna lie,” he says.

“We do this, there’s no going back.”

“I know.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

She closes her teeth with a snap. “This isn’t a game, Erend.”

“Good, because I’m not playing around.” He looks over at her, at the way she’s staring at the ground, her hair falling around her face so he can’t see.

He’s thought about this obsessively, tending it like a precious coal. She’s never had enough of a family to miss. She’s been desperately running one step ahead of the apocalypse. She’s always facing outward, always facing ahead. She’s had to. She’s never had a moment to herself.

There’s a hard flush of anger at that, tinged with shame that once again, he’s been so focused on himself. She hasn’t thought about this, because she _can’t_ , and it’s hitting her like an avalanche.

Selfish, stupid, but it’s _true_. He can’t pretend it’s not. She’s sitting here tightly clenched and coiled and blazing a defensiveness he’s never seen before.

He owes her honesty. If they’re not honest with each other right now, if he and Aloy don’t grit their teeth and pull their truths out like ropes of intestine and vein to drop steaming in the thick space between them, they’re going to lose everything. Everything they are will fall apart, and they both know it.

“Every time I look at Itamen, I wonder,” he says quietly. “Any kid. All kids. I know myself, Aloy, and I know my blood is poison, but I can’t stop, and every single time I think about it, it’s only ever with you.”

“Really?”

“Steel to my bones.”

“Why?” It’s not judgmental. It’s just Aloy, picking at a scab of information until it bleeds.

“My family was shit,” he says quietly. “It was me and Ersa. We didn’t have anyone else. We didn’t have _anyone_. I would have _killed_ for real parents, and you, looking for your mom...I get it. I really, really do. Fuck, Aloy, I don’t have an ounce of confidence here.” He gestures helplessly. “If there are two people less prepared to raise a kid, I’d hate to meet them.”

He thinks of Itamen, conceived as a final desperate grasp at peace, the weight of an empire’s future crushing fragile newborn bones. There are a thousand reasons why this is a terrible idea. There are a thousand reasons why they shouldn’t be parents.

It doesn’t stop him from wanting it, just like there were a thousand reasons why he shouldn’t have let himself love Aloy and yet he couldn’t stop himself.

It’s something he’s wanted for himself, but suddenly, it’s not about him. It’s not about proving that he’s better than his father. There’s an ember here between them, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t kill himself trying to protect it. He would take on the entire Sundom right now, he would walk away from Avad and the Vanguard and _everything_ without a single question, all for a tiny thing he didn't even know was alive.

“We don’t have to do this,” he makes himself say, and it’s the hardest fucking thing he’s ever said. “Marry me or don’t. We can have this kid or we can figure something out. None of this changes how I feel. None of this changes what I want.”

She’s still not looking at him, fat tears falling onto her gloves. “It changes a _lot_ of things, Erend.”

It does, and it doesn’t.

It _doesn’t_.


	78. Chapter 78

There’s only so long a storm can howl before it collapses. Muscle fails, tendons tear, avalanches fumble to a powdery end.

They’ve come to that point.

The sky is the painful blue of deep ice, the absence of any swaddling clouds driving the air to sharp aggression. It’s not even midday, but it’s too fucking cold to do anything else, so he and Aloy retreat to the fire, wrapping themselves in fur that almost makes it bearable. Erend mechanically makes tea, watching the bubbles slowly congeal in the bottom of the pot.

_Right now is when you need to start proving it._

There are warm mugs, and he hands one to Aloy. She’s come back to herself a little, but there are still crusts of salt on her cheeks, like sledge trails on a frozen lake. He feels like he’s fought the Spire all over again, bludgeoned beyond a bloody pulp. It hurts to breathe.

She blows the steam off the tea. “I’m still mad at you,” she finally says, not looking at him across the fire.

“Not the only one,” he admits.

“I’m first in line.”

Her tone is just raw enough that he can’t tease. “First,” he agrees. “First in everything.”

There’s a long moment of silence. “Don’t tell anyone.”

She’s not talking about being mad, and his throat closes up. “Not a word.”

“I _mean_ it.”

“Who am I gonna tell?” He glances toward the Oseram. Across the settlement, Gildun is talking with wide, animated gestures while Burgrend listens with a skeptical expression.

They’ve been good companions, mostly. They’re a respite in a foreign land. They’re both good men, but they aren’t his friends, and when Erend leaves, he won’t keep in touch. Once, he wouldn’t have known the difference, but now, it’s as sharp as the cold.

Aloy relents a little, her face going soft. “Are you okay?”

Erend opens his mouth, and then closes it again. He isn’t even remotely okay, because this is huge and terrifying. He can’t say he never imagined this, because he _has_ , but he hadn’t thought to imagine this specific moment. Dreams of light and family and a hearth dance in his mind every time he closes his eyes, but they’re always long-established things. He’s never considered how it all might start.  

He isn’t okay, because this is everything he’s ever wanted, and he has no idea how to deal with it.

He has no idea how to _say_ all that. Instead, he focuses on the nauseous swell of curiosity. He wants to know everything, and he has no idea even what questions to ask. “How’d you...when you realized?”

“It still doesn’t feel real.”

 _Oh_ , he knows the feeling. “The salvebrush?” She’d said what it did. He’d been too dumb to think, and she’d taken care of it. She’s been carrying his responsibility this entire time, and he’d been content with that. He needs to know how he’s failed.  

“Salvebrush…” Her eyes go watery again, and she presses the mug against her forehead. “It changes.”

“What do you mean?”

“I knew how it was in the mountains,” she says. “I just didn’t _check-_ ” Her shoulders slump, a blunt gesture of defeat. “The herbalists in Meridian don’t really stock it. They kept saying it wasn’t strong enough, and I thought they were just being ignorant.” She shakes her head. “I talked with Ourea. We were snowed in, and I had to.” Her mittens curl around the mug in a way that has nothing to do with its warmth. “She was taken to Sunfall during the Red Raids. They used her to gather machines for the Sun Ring. She knew the herbs in the Sundom and the herbs in the Cut, and she said that when the weather is warm, so many of them grow too fast and lose their strength. A seed in the Cut is worth five further south.” Aloy takes a shaky breath. “I didn’t know that.”

“This doesn’t have to happen,” he makes himself say, each syllable like a punch to his chest. “We can-”

“I don’t want to have that conversation right now,” she says sharply. “Just...not right now.”

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

They both lapse into silence. Aloy’s head slowly bobs into her furs despite her best efforts, and when he’s sure she’s asleep, Erend reaches over to tug her hood further down to keep the brittle afternoon sun off her face.

He can’t breathe. He’s buzzing like stray electricity, _right now’s when you need to start proving it_  leaning into his sternum like a lazy glacier. He’s going to wake up any moment. He’s going to wake up cold and alone, and this will all have been an excruciating dream.

A Banuk woman walks past, her toddler bound in a bundle on her back. Erend finds himself tracing the paths of the leather cords with his eyes, the backboard’s dimensions taking shape in his mind. He imagines the weight of the straps on his shoulders. His axe - he’d have to carry it somewhere else, if he carried it at all-

He doesn’t know if this is something he’s allowed to want. A wash of bile fills his mouth with the sudden fear that he _doesn’t_ want this-

No, he wants this. He’s wanted this for months. Does he? Is he sure? Is this another fantasy that he can’t fulfill? When he’d been young and drunk and stupid, he’d lie out in the sun, creating elaborate, grandiose scenes in his imagination: visions of dramatic heroism and manful seduction that never had any hope of coming true. Is this the same?

He isn’t that boy. He _knows_ he isn’t. He’s made mistakes and he’s fucked up, but he’s still Ersa’s heir, the captain of the Vanguard of the Sun King. He’s the steel before the iron. He’s brute strength and solid muscle. He’s a man who loves an impossible woman, and somehow, there’s an even more impossible spark kindled between them.

He looks over at Aloy, the pale fringe of her eyelashes resting on cheeks gone ruddy with cold. Frost from her breath glimmers on the collar of her anorak.

She’d taken down a mountain, and he got drunk. He doesn’t deserve any of this, but here it is, and he has to make himself worthy.  

 

****

 

The volcano has gone still, but the thing with the Daemon isn’t over. Around nightfall, Ourea’s apprentice Naltuk comes up, hovering at the edge of the fire until Aloy waves him in.

“One’s been seen?” she asks tiredly.

The boy nods. “Northwest, downriver from the fishing camp.”

Aloy heaves herself to her feet with a groan, leveraging herself up with her spear. “Best go now.” She takes a step and winces. “It’ll move or kill someone if we don’t.”

Erend reaches for his axe. “What will?”

“The Daemon is gone,” Naltuk says, “but some of its Fireclaws escaped.”

Fireclaw. He’s fought a Scorcher, the lithe, foxlike beast with lightning reflexes and flame spewing from its maw. The run for the werak had ended with three monsterous machines Erend later heard called Frostclaws, and he really, really hopes this isn’t any worse.

Hope isn’t anything in the Cut, and Naltuk’s posture tells him everything he needs to know. The boy holds himself in a way that hits Erend somewhere deep and soft. It’s the same stiff courage he’s seen in Itamen, the unnatural gravity of a child pushed toward adulthood too soon. Confidence will come; it just hasn’t had time to alloy itself to his bones.

They’ll be great men someday, both Naltuk and Itamen, and Erend will die making sure they get their chance.

“Are you sure this is something you need to do?” he asks, leaning toward Aloy and keeping his voice low. “I mean, you know.”

Her eyes flash. “You do _not_ get to treat me like I’m some...fragile porcelain.”

“You look like hell,” he says quietly. “That’s all I mean.”

The fight abruptly drops out of her. “I said I’d do it.”

“You just stopped their mountain. I think they’d understand.”

She shakes her head. “There aren’t enough experienced hunters left. It’d be a bloodbath.”

Steel before iron.

“Well,” he says, hefting his axe. “What are we waiting for?”

 

****

 

It’s almost a day’s walk to the fishing camp. Erend wants there to be mounts - and he’s _never_ thought he’d actually prefer riding one of the beasts - but there isn’t a herd nearby. The footpath is, at least, well-marked and mercifully clear, frozen little pillars of bare dirt crunching beneath their boots. Nearby, little clusters of pink flowers resolutely thrust their fuzzy heads out of the snow.

The trail rises with the cliffs. Below, there’s a trio of Watchers boiling with Daemonic energy, and Aloy downs them with three perfect shots.

“I thought the Daemon was gone,” he says.

She shakes her head. “The malware is still in their code.”

They aren’t an immediate threat, but after the volcano, Erend isn’t sure if trying to limit their kills from HEPHAESTUS even matters. If nothing else, these three are a mercy killing, if such a thing is possible, and he suddenly remembers her dispatching a Sawtooth along a river, back when she’d been feral and wary, and he’d been nothing but a besotted stranger.

It blows him away, how far they’ve come. Of all the things he’s never expected, the greatest is standing next to him. The second-greatest is tucked inside her, and every breath is another spike of something too big to be joy and too electric to be terror.

Around sunset, they make camp at the top of a ridge in the lee of a tall pillar of stone. It’s sheltered from the wind, but not so sheltered that they won’t easily hear uninvited guests. When she’s sure there isn’t an immediate threat, Aloy brushes the snow from a nearby log and watches Erend coax a small fire to life. There’s jerky and blocks of frozen goat fat to be boiled into a sort of soup, freeze rime seedpods scattered in less for flavor than for protection.

“When we get out of here, I’m never eating freeze rime again,” Erend says.

She makes a small noise of agreement.

They eat in silence. Around them, the trees creak in a light breeze, loose snow skittering over ice-covered drifts. The fire struggles, and he adds another chunk of wood.

Out of nowhere, she says. “I heard it.”

It takes a moment, and then his guts go cold.

“HEPHAESTUS,” she goes on, staring at some point just beyond her bowl. “It sounded...plain. HADES wanted to kill us. HEPHAESTUS just...constructs. There wasn’t anyone to talk to, but it was talking anyway, going through lines of code and building commands to execute.”

“Like you,” Erend supplies. “Nattering on when you’re working by yourself.”

A small wash of color creeps into her ears. “HADES was so intelligent, so persuasive. HEPHAESTUS isn’t any of that. It was just...working. Busy. Linear. Purposeful.”

“It doesn’t even know it’s killing us?” Erend can deal with malevolent. He understands violence. This: this is simple indifference. He’s known that HEPHAESTUS sees them as a threat. He’s just never expected to be a _small_ threat.

It stings more than it should.

“We’re a flaw in the system,” Aloy says. “I don’t think it registers who we are. It constructs and recycles, and we’re damaging its system. Of course we need to be removed.”

“That’s not new information.”

“I know, but…” She shakes her head. “I guess I expected it to be more like a person.”

He refills her tea, and slowly draws out everything that’s happened. It takes a lot of coaxing, but he’s dying to know and despite herself, she’s dying to talk about it. He learns about Ourea, about CYAN, about why Aloy had to fight for control of the werak, and what happened when she went inside the mountain.

“The Daemon wasn’t its own entity,” she says. “It was a tool, an extension of HEPHAETUS. CYAN said HEPHAESTUS was looking for independent AIs to slave to its network.”

“So they can work for it?”

She nods. “The Daemon made its own Cauldron. It’s the first one I’ve ever seen that was specifically designed to produce machines for combat. Hunter-killers.” She sips her tea. “At first, I didn’t understand, because they kill more than hunters, but something in the way CYAN said it made me think it was something else. I think it’s more of a tactic.”

“The radar,” he says, realization dawning.

“ _Exactly_. I keep seeing it over and over up here: a pack of Scrappers or a Longleg, prowling with a Scorcher or a Frostclaw. The bigger machines don’t need anything to protect them, but I think that’s the point. The machine with radar detect the threat, and the other takes it out.”

“Why not together, like a Thunderjaw?”

“I think it’s more efficient this way. Say you have a Scrapper. It’s smaller but still effective, less resource-intensive to make and therefore more expendable. A Scorcher moves fast, but it’s bigger and harder to manufacture.”

“I don’t like the sound of this.”

She shakes her head. “It’s what we’ve got. With any luck, that knowledge was destroyed with this Cauldron.”

Lightning can strike the same place twice, and they both know what kind of luck they have; it doesn’t need to be said.

Conversation dwindles with the fire. There’s just enough of a moon to make the clouds glow green below the twisting sky-smoke. The dawn star hangs low and bright on the horizon, a single point brighter than all the rest.

He’s going to be a father. The world is huge and fucked, and he’s painfully aware of everything that rests on Aloy’s shoulders. He’s tried not to think about what she said at the bottom of the mountain, but it flares in his mind, fresh and hot. She’d want him to purge the other subroutines if she can’t, and he’s not at all sure he can. He’s not even sure he _would_. If she dies, all he can see himself doing is crawling back into the bottle to let himself drown.

She wants more than that for him. She thinks he’s worth more than that. He needs to stop assuming he’ll fall down without her support, because thinking that way just makes it true.

“Look,” he finally says, because if it’s going to be said, it needs to be said now. “If you meant what you said before, if I’m really...if this is our future, chasing down these hunter-killer things and breaking Cauldrons, we have to actually do it together.”

“We _are_ -”

“No,” he says tiredly. “You left me by myself down in that cold-forge camp.”

“I couldn’t-”

“Maybe not. But you could have _tried_.”

“You don’t know what it was like,” she snaps. “It was too dangerous!”

“That’s my _point_ ,” he retorts. “I take our hits. That’s the agreement.”

“That’s not the agreement anymore.”

“Why not?”

“You’re more than that,” she snaps. “You’re- Erend, you…” She abruptly closes her mouth, her fingers diving into the collar of her parka. She brings out the little pouch for her Focus, and slips it off her neck.

“ _No_ ,” he says, horrified. “What are you-”

She thrusts it out toward him. “It’s for you.”

He hesitates, the leather still warm from her body. He gave her this. Why is she giving it back?

Aloy rolls her eyes. “ _Open_ it.”

He parts the tiny clasp and upends the contents into his palm. When he opens his hand, his stomach leaps into his throat. He has to look at her temple to make sure, yeah, she’s still wearing hers-

It’s a Focus.

“I don’t understand,” he says, because he doesn’t.

“It’s for you,” she repeats. She’s gone tight and angry, exactly the way she does when she’s afraid. “When we were in Eleuthia, there was a whole room of them, just waiting to be claimed. I took one, but I didn’t…” She takes a breath. “People who have these are dangerous, Erend: Sylens, the cultists, Helis. These are what they used to find me. Olin had one, and they killed everyone at the Proving.”

“You’re really selling it.” He wants to tell her she’s not dangerous, but if he’s honest, she’s the biggest threat of all. She’s a key, and her Focus helps her find the locks. She could have the entire Sundom kissing her feet if she wanted, and the more she learns, the easier it would be. “I don’t need this. You’re the one who can open the doors, and I’ll be right there-”

“It’s for both of us,” she says. “It’s...it’s so we can talk.”

He’s still not getting it. He feels like he’s hanging on the edge of understanding, but he’s not there yet.

“I meant to give it to you earlier,” she blurts out. “I meant to do it in Eleuthia, but I just...I couldn’t make myself, but then they _shot_ you, and I- I kept not doing it.”

He starts to laugh. He can’t help himself. “Both of us, then.”

She frowns.

“Marry me,” he says.

That earns him an irritated snort. “Just take the damn thing, Erend.”

He’s not sure he’s _ever_ held Aloy’s; for such a rare and valuable piece, it’s almost insubstantial in his palm. Like everything Ancient, it’s startlingly beautiful, its smooth surface somehow glittering with a thousand impossible facets.

He tucks it above his ear the same way she does. “How’s it going to stick?”

One eyebrow quirks. “It just does.”

Even if he’d known what to expect, there’s no way he could have prepared. Even though he’s sitting down and buried in furs, when he brushes the thing with his thumb, his vision explodes with such white violence that he almost bolts away.

“It’s like that,” she says, her body a solid weight as his world spins. “Give it a second.”

As the shock subsides, he makes himself breathe. Everything looks so...sharp, and a single movement of his head seems to take forever. Something bright and blue flickers to his left, and when he turns, he sees the ghostly shape of a fox slink through the trees. He looks over at Aloy - slowly, so slowly - and she’s blue, too, as pale as the hottest part of a flame.

He already knows she’s the flame, but to _see_ it…

She’s watching him, a small smile playing at her mouth. “What do you think?”

He can’t think. He can’t even _breathe_ . He’s always seen her Focus-trance as a weird little idiosyncrasy, something that comes from being brilliant and strange, but this, _this_ : this is like being part of the blue-white-pink flickering light itself, sinking into it as if the centuries have fallen away and he’s somehow an Ancient himself.

He can’t imagine killing the world, not if it could be seen like this.

He’s so lost and dazzled that her voice startles him almost as much as the initial burst of color. “I programmed it so that we’re on the same channel,” she says.

He knows what that means, he _does_ , but his mouth is dry and his eyes blur from the light.

“It means we can talk to each other.”

It takes several long moments before he’s ready to try, and turning it off feels like amputating a limb. She swipes an unknown command on hers, and then he’s surrounded again, but differently, and when she moves her hand again, he sees it in his own eyes, and _he’s seeing what she’s seeing_.

He’s touched her. He’s buried himself in her hair and kissed every inch of her skin, but this is somehow more intimate. He feels naked and drunk with rapture.

She shows him some basic things. He doesn’t understand at all, but he’ll get there - by the forge, he’s going to get there - and when he hears her voice echoing in his head, he almost forgets how to breathe. “This...Aloy, this is…” He can’t find the right words, so he ends with an awkward, “...thanks.”

There’s a shy, pleased smile on her face, and she tucks herself against his chest. “It’s a powerful tool, and I want you to have one.”

She’d found Ersa, and now she’s trusting him with the same impossible power. His instinct is to tell her he doesn’t deserve that trust. He doesn’t deserve her trust, or her, or the magic jewel above his ear, but...

_Right now is when you need to start proving it._

“I get lost,” he makes himself say. “The other night...I knew where I needed to be, and I chose not to be there.” It’s not an apology. It can’t be. It’s not an excuse, either. It’s just the cold-hammered truth.

There’s a long moment of silence, punctuated by the fire’s sudden pop. “It’s been so _hard_ ,” Aloy says quietly, the raw edge of tears hanging back like a stormfront. “...I think I was mostly angry because you got to slip, and I didn’t.”

Erend hadn’t thought of it like that, and it makes him feel even worse. “We use these things,” he says. “We talk. You talk me off the ledge. I’ll talk you up and over.”

Her jaw clenches. “The worst part is that it’s all so _pointless_. If they’d just let me walk up their stupid mountain, I could have purged the core, destroyed the Cauldron, and been done. I wouldn’t have had to spend weeks ingratiating myself. I already don’t want to be doing this; I don’t need people wasting my time telling me _they_ don’t want me to.”

“We can leave,” he says. “We can pack up right now and be gone. You’ve done the hardest part. Let them clean up after.”

She’s silent, and he knows she’s thinking about it. “No,” she finally says, resigned. “I said I’d do it.”

“Can’t help being a good person,” he teases.

She drops her head against his shoulder. “Yeah, well.”

“Marry me.”

“You’re not going to stop with that, are you.”

He grins. “Not until you say yes.”


	79. Chapter 79

There’s a Fireclaw out there waiting to be killed and Erend should sleep, but he can’t. He holds Aloy in one arm, the other sweeping through the glowing images projected in his vision.

He doesn’t change anything; he doesn’t know how. He just lets the impossible blue slide past his face, symbol after symbol, until it all blurs into the aurora above.

 

****

 

At dawn, the sky is mostly clear, the clouds distant and soft overhead. Tiny snowflakes lazily float through the air like glowbugs, an idle reminder of better days. Fog hangs in the valley, low and blue in its depths and rising to pink with the morning sun.

It isn’t long before he and Aloy find their quarry. The trail is obvious: trees are casually knocked aside, their roots upended like playthings. If it weren’t for the dense scorch on the bark, Erend could easily mistake it for the oblivious path of a Trampler.

He hears the Fireclaw before he sees it, the familiar inhale of a bellows that turns into a stone-on-stone growl. “Stay behind me,” Aloy mutters, and they shuffle toward the sound.

It’s exactly what he’s been dreading, but worse.

There are three Behemoths nearby, absently nudging at the snow. The Fireclaw is easily as big, but there’s a restless energy to it as it paces. An entire copse of trees falls in its path, crushed without a thought. Daemonic color coils around its neck, embers glowing at its joints.

“Flames,” he says. “That’s nice.”

“It throws boulders, too.”

“Of course it does.”

She licks her lips. “Are you ready for this?”

It’s endearing the way she asks, as if she doesn’t already know he’s aching for something to hit. As if she doesn’t know he’s with her in all things. “Steel before iron.”

With a single nod, Aloy disappears into the snow with a handful of proximity bombs. Erend sets tripwires and heads for higher ground.

He hadn’t hunted a Behemoth until Aloy, and he’s still blown away by how casually unconcerned she is about the size of the machines. She nocks her bow, three arrows spread between her fingers as she aims for the ponderous blaze sac in the first beast’s belly. Her shot hits true, and her lips twitch in approval as the explosion levels everything within two hundred feet, including the beast and one of its fellows.

The Fireclaw roars, its entire body going rigid with fury. It bounds toward the vaporized Behemoth with terrifying grace and whirls to inspect the injured one. The third Behemoth, startled by the explosion, goes running for the hills.

“Get that one later,” Aloy mutters.

The Fireclaw is even more terrifying up close. It rears back on its hind legs, surveying its assailants with a calculating eye. With an audible gurgle, blaze floods from the tanks at its shoulders, igniting the burners at its joints. It smacks flaming paws together, and launches itself forward.

There are times Erend almost regrets his choices.

He dodges, taking a huge swing at the Fireclaw’s front leg as it passes. He hits plate, his axe bouncing uselessly off the ceramic. The Fireclaw throws its momentum into an earth-shattering tumble that shears a chunk of loose slate from a nearby rock, and panic spikes through Erend’s body as he frantically scrabbles away.

He doesn’t have a second to think. He swings at its belly, trying to slice through some of the cables tucked against the plating. The machine dances away, striking out with a massive paw. Erend goes tumbling ass over teakettle, the breath gone from his lungs.

“ _Move!_ ” Aloy shouts into his ear, her voice tinny in the Focus. “Move move move-”

He moves, but it isn’t fast enough.

Erend isn’t a smith. The smoke in his bones is the closest he’s ever come to a forge, but he knows fire. He knows the warm crackle of wood and the acrid glow of coal.

He’s wreathed in air that’s even hotter than flame. He hears the top layer of leather of his gambeson snap as it shrinks and burns. He throws himself to the ground, blind, and somehow mercifully plunges into a nearby snowbank.

Something hooks the edge of his pauldron, and he swings out with his axe. A cable comes loose, blaze spurting in thick gobbets across the snow. He hears plate snap in the heat, and as he paws melting snow from his eyes, Aloy hits the Fireclaw’s head with a tearblast arrow, the concussive blast knocking the beast off-balance.

There’s the hard whine of pent-up electrical energy, and the Fireclaw lurches forward, slamming its front paws down with a sudden spray of lava. Erend ducks, the tree behind him exploding into steam and tinder.

She hadn’t mentioned that the boulders would be _molten_ , but he doesn’t think it would have made a difference.

On the other side of the valley, Aloy bellows a wordless battlecry. A volley of arrows like stars arc through the air, shattering plate and ripping through cable, and the machine spins toward her like a kite sharply tugged by its string. She dives behind a stony outcrop, narrowly avoiding the long tongue of flame licking out behind her.

Erend runs forward, and everything becomes a blur of white snow and white fire. Aloy’s voice is in his ear, urging him left or right, guiding him when he’s moving too fast to properly see. It’s good until it isn’t: the Fireclaw swipes him with a huge paw hard enough to dislocate his shoulder, and he hits the ground hard enough to pop it back into place. Gasping, he lurches back up, letting the momentum of his axe pull him to his feet. He’s upright half a breath before he’s engulfed.

His brain disappears. He fumbles with gloves that don’t come off. Boarskin and his own flesh melt together, and he can’t help the roar of pain that tears itself from his body. He’s got one good hand and his vision is blank with pain. He swings his axe and it somehow connects enough that he severs the last significant actuator in the Fireclaw’s leg, and it careens to a pile. An arrow from somewhere hits something important, and the whole thing goes up like the sun.

He’s distantly aware of Aloy sprinting across the battlefield, vaulting fallen logs and scattered metal plate. His name is a sharp hiccup in her chest, and then she’s peering into his face, tears streaking through the ash on her cheeks. She looks like she did back at the Spire, and then the memory is in his lungs, clawing, caustic smoke, the air unbreathable, rockets and stone-

It’s not real. None of it is real. There’s snow in his mouth and snow under his collar. He’s burning with heat and cold, and it takes several long, shuddery breaths before he’s back in his own body.

They can talk to each other during a fight now. They can also hear each other scream.

“That was fun,” he says, because he suddenly feels like he’s drowning and he needs to say something, anything, to break the choking tension. “...four more?”

Aloy’s face is white beneath ruddy frost-chill. “We don’t-”

“Best of five. Winner marries the other.”

She rolls her eyes, and he’d suddenly fight a thousand Fireclaws if it means seeing her come back to herself like that.

 

****

 

Slowly, they pick themselves up. His gambeson and parka are in rough shape, but there’s still skin where it feels like there isn’t, and absolutely none of it matters because Aloy’s fine. She’s bruised and scorched around the edges, but she’s okay, and that’s enough to ease the clot in his chest.

The thing about burns is that the least severe hurt the most. It builds like an avalanche, and by nightfall, he can barely see. He swallows the fire kiln that she gives him until it starts coming back up, and then he just presses his face into the snow and tries not to die.

“Talk to me,” he manages through gritted teeth. “Please. Just. Anything.”

She gamely launches into a long dissection of the Fireclaw’s fighting capabilities, and manages about five minutes before trailing off.

“Tell me something else.”

“Being inside Thunder’s Drum...it was like the Spire,” she finally says, her voice so small and hoarse that he almost can’t hear it.

“I know.”

“I’m _tired_ of it being like that.”

He lets out a breath, watching it condense in the frigid air. “Yeah.”

“This was one Cauldron. _One_. How many others has HEPHAESTUS made?” She shakes her head, gesturing to the Fireclaw corpse. “If _that_ isn’t the worst of what we’ll face…”

He doesn’t want to think about it either. Once, the Sawtooth had been the most terrifying machine in the Sundom, but now it seems like child’s play.

He wants to talk about big things. He wants to talk about this and the world and her and him and the baby - they’re having a _baby_ , and that’s still something that feels like the sun, something too bright to actually see - but it’s still fucking cold, and he really hurts. He wants something stronger than the bare mouthful of ember, but hintergold is too dangerous. He could very easily fall asleep and never wake up.

Aloy has her hood pulled low, a few tendrils of copper-gold hair clinging to the fur. There are machines to kill and a world to save; right now, he just watches on the firelight on her face and concentrates on breathing. 

 

****

 

When sunlight hits his eyes, he knows he’s slept, but his body doesn’t believe it.

They stagger to their feet. The sky is clear and brittle, the sheen on the horizon teasing the possibility of a new storm, and even though he’s stiff enough that he wanted another day - another _week_ \- to rest, they have to keep moving. His hands are too sore to hold anything and too raw to bend at the knuckle, so he has Aloy slather them in freeze rime and carefully slide them into his mittens. It’s so cold that the ointment is sallow and chunky.

“Remember warmth?” Erend says wistfully. “A fresh breeze turning the roof vents-”

“The sun on the stones,” she agrees.

“Sitting in the shade in the afternoon…”

“The way the forest smells after a hard rain.”

“That waxy green of the plants by the fountains.  

“Fresh melon.”

“Splashing your face with cool water.”

“The smell-” she stops herself with a hitched breath, the pleasant fantasy snapped like a broken icicle.

He waits, because whatever it is, she wants to say it and she’ll do it on her own time.

“How you smell when you come back,” she finally says quietly. “Leather and dust and sweat.”

There’s a retort somewhere - _bet I smell pretty gross right now_ \- but he owes her honesty. He owes her seriousness. The Cut slices through everything, knocking away slag and leaving only bare metal behind. Instead, he ducks his head to press his forehead against hers. “We’ll make it back,” he promises. “I swear on the forge.”

“What if it’s different?” Her voice clicks on the words.

“We do what we always do,” he says. “We figure it out.”

He wants to hold her, but she moves just out of reach, her arms tucked protectively over her belly. “What if we don’t?”

His throat closes up and His entire body flashes to ice, just as suddenly as if he’s been hit by a Glinthawk’s chillwater. _If you’re going to be better than your father, right now is when you have to start proving it._ “I want us to. I really, really want us to.” He swallows hard. “Marry me.”

She glowers. “Saying that doesn’t solve anything.”

“I meant everything I said before, Aloy.”

“Saying it doesn’t solve anything,” she repeats, and turns to adjust the longbow slung across her shoulder.

Saying it _doesn’t_ solve anything. He knows that. He also knows that right now, all they have are words. The world is bitterly cold and hostile, the machines aggressive and deadly. Meridian is a fever-dream, and if they don’t concentrate on the path just ahead of their own footsteps, they might never make it home. This isn’t a place for dreams. Even the Banuk, the stalwart inhabitants of this forsaken region, speak only of survival.

It’s been weeks, and Erend still hates this land as much as he did when he crossed beyond the Grave Hoard. He hates how hard it is, and he hates what it’s done to him and Aloy.

He hates that he got drunk. He can’t think about it without breaking into a cold sweat of shame, a huge swell of nausea hitting him like an avalanche. He can’t apologize - saying it doesn’t solve anything - and even if he did, even if somehow Aloy could forgive him, he will never forgive himself.

He’s going to be a father - he’s going to be a _father_ , they’re having a _baby_ \- and yeah, he didn’t know, but he’d still fallen back into the curse of his bloodline, and it makes him sick. She’s light and life and heat, the hearth he wants so much it makes his heart ache, and a _kid_ , that excruciating, impossible hope: it’s right here, and instead of wallowing in his own stupid misery, he needs to stand on two feet and hit what needs to be hit. There’s a future out there, a future that he’d all but given up on, and he is going to fight for it with every breath in his lungs.

He thinks of Itamen, of sparks and stars, the heavy weight of a child in his arms and Aloy’s hair surrounding him as he sleeps.

The Cut is a fierce barrier. It takes even the most certain alliance and rips it apart. There are dense layers of heavy fur and the killing chill of icy air between him and Aloy, and Erend doesn’t know how to mend the separation. It takes a forge to alloy two metals, and he can’t muster that kind of heat. He barely has the energy to lift his own pack.

 

****

 

The fishing camp is a few hours’ walk, and there, Aloy trades for information and supplies.

There are so many things hanging unsaid between them. He feels it like an oncoming storm, but it’s cold and there are machines to kill. “Where to now?” he asks.

“North,” she says. Her expression is flat and bleak, her freckles lost in the chill-bloom in her cheeks. There are still bruises pooling under her eyes, and green like the sky-smoke arcing across her neck and chin. He knows she’s still favoring her right hand.

He wants to say they’ll be all right. He wants to kiss her forehead and pull her against his chest. He wants to spit at Banuk feet and head south as fast as his body allows.

Instead, he just nods tiredly and steps out into the wilderness.


	80. Chapter 80

They don’t talk much. She’s tucked into herself like folded cloth, not tight but too deliberately secure for him to pry. They’re both too tired to hash out the mess between them, and anything idle dies before it can be said.

The next Fireclaw is in a box canyon, and Aloy passes her slingshot to Erend. From their hiding place in the cliffs above, they wear the machine down until she finishes it with her last tearblast arrow. It feels like it takes forever, but they both walk away unscathed.

In this cold-forge hellscape, he thinks it might be a first.

They make camp. She digs out her knife and tinkering kit, and manages ten arrows before giving up. “It’ll be enough,” she finally says, holding ice-white fingers to the spare little fire. It’s only a third of what she usually carries, her favorite ammo in her favorite weapon.

He’s still nursing his burns, and nursing an even greater resentment that he can’t take her knife and help her in the task. He _wants_ her to have her bow. It’s an extension of her body, and like everything else, the environment has rendered it ineffective. The Banuk seem to favor weapons that don’t require fine dexterity: he’s seen clubs and cudgels, but even the more sophisticated bladdered contraptions have triggers built for mittened hands. The air is so cold that fuses often die long before they trigger a bomb, and snares and traps freeze in place.

Subtlety is anathema. It’s the reason the Banuk wear such bright colors: there’s no point in hiding. The surest way to victory is to hit first, harder and faster; Erend can appreciate that - steel before iron - but he’s been travelling with Aloy long enough that he’s starting to prefer sneaking up on his opponent.

He’s spent all this time working so hard on being smart, on proving to himself that he’s not just another dumb soldier with big fists, and it feels like he’s sliding backward. He’s spent weeks aching to go with her, and now that he’s here he still feels useless.

Snow falls, small flakes like spider silk lazily drifting through the dry air. Aloy’s asleep, motionless as the dead, and on impulse Erend reaches over to palm the side of her head, his fingers sinking into the thick fox fur of her hood. It feels nothing like her hair, but for one long moment, he closes his eyes, trying to pretend.

She’s right here, and he _misses_ her.

 

****

 

He dreams.

He and Aloy are walking through snow and he can’t keep up. For every step she takes, Erend has to take two and he’s falling farther and farther behind. He’s inexplicably terrified that she’s going to notice, she’s going to see that this is something he can’t do. He grabs at nearby rocks and trees trying to haul himself forward, but it doesn’t work. The snow is like deep water and he’s getting swept away by the current.

There’s a bauble half-buried the snow nearby, but when he stretches out his arm, it’s just out of reach. It crackles with the purple energy of the Daemon and that isn’t right, the Daemon’s been purged, but the bauble is ruined, its protection corrupted.

He _knows_ he’s dreaming, and as he hauls himself across the face of a stony outcropping, he wonders if this is actually a nightmare. There isn’t blood, but there’s the same heart-pounding urgency. He remembers Glinthawks diving down and rockets exploding across his vision, and when he looks down at his hands, as if by suggestion the blood is there, sticky and dark.

He desperately looks up at Aloy but she’s lost in the blowing snow. He hears the crunch of a Fireclaw somewhere up ahead but when he tries to shout a warning, his voice is stolen by the wind.

They’re never getting out.

 

****

 

Erend wakes up to chattering teeth and an ash-gray sky. It feels like there are ice crystals clawing at his eyes. The temperature plunged sometime overnight, the harbinger of another storm; the fire is out, choked by the cold.

If they don’t start moving, they’ll freeze to death, and they’re already most of the way there.

He lurches to his feet, and pulls Aloy up after him. She shoves at his hand, aiming a kick at his knee that mercifully doesn’t connect.

“Hey,” he says, irritation warring with concern. “We have to go.”

She stares dully through the frost on her eyelashes, barely shivering, and then fumbles for her pack.

According to the scouts, there’s a third Fireclaw somewhere east. Erend wants to scream that if the Banuk are as great hunters as they claim, they shouldn’t have any problem taking down these things alone, but somehow, it’s easier to hunt them himself than protest.

They find the Fireclaw pacing around a broken tower. He can’t imagine how bad it would be if the tower were functional, each pulse sucking the life from his marrow. They bring the machine down, but just barely: Aloy takes a molten boulder to the chest, a dull thump like falling snow, and topples backward into a frozen stream. With one last wild swing, Erend hits something that starts a chain reaction, sparks flashing to blaze and blaze flashing into a fireball that decimates the Fireclaw and evaporates the snow around it for fifty paces.

Aloy hauls herself out of the water, her lips blue despite her steaming anorak. She isn’t dead. The explosion rings in his ears, but he’s also not dead and he thinks that’s the best outcome he could hope for.

“You okay?” he makes himself ask.

She lets out a brief hiccup of hysteria, her lips forming a word he can’t hear. “Okay?”

He thinks about a warm breeze suffused with the dry comfort of newly-mown grass, and it feels more like a dream than a memory.

He shakes himself free. The Cut slices through everything, and his singular goal is to get Aloy out. If he thinks about the baby, he’s going to lose his mind. He’s never felt so trapped, and there’s nothing he can do but try to keep moving.

The violence of the Fireclaw’s end means that any salvageable parts have been scattered, but the sky is starting to press down like a damp, heavy cloak and there’s no time to search. He walks a slow circle as the whine in his ears gradually drops away, but all he finds is a single power cell, its housing cracked and useless.

Aloy swipes in her Focus. “If the Banuk want any of this shit, they’ll have to come get it themselves,” she mutters. There’s the Scrapper radar from Varga safely waiting for them in Song’s Edge, and Erend is more than happy to leave everything else lying in the snow.

Snow gets kicked up by wind, and by mid-afternoon, the blizzard is at full strength. Aloy had the presence of mind to tie one end of her rope to his waist, but even with his Focus on, Erend can barely see the blue outline of her body as they push through the terrifying white. Out of nowhere, something cracks his shins, and it’s only through Aloy’s quick reflexes that he doesn’t pitch forward into an abruptly yawning hole.

He’s hit the top of a ladder. He hears her make a small noise of relief over the Focus, and they both descend, climbing mechanically until his boots hit metal. At the bottom, he pulls Aloy into a nearby alcove just as his legs give out. They sit there for a long time, huddled together and breathing hard.

As his eyes adjust to the darkness, he lets his gaze slowly wander. It’s an Ancient facility of some sort, a deep cylinder dropped into the ground and pitted with age and ice.

“Where are we?” Even at a whisper, his voice is too big. It echoes off the walls and down a tunnel, the words reaching at depths he can’t see.

“Safe,” she says, and starts pulling her arms out of her sleeves and up against her chest, making a cocoon out of her anorak. “For now, anyway.”

He thinks about Zero Dawn, about how it was cool and damp beneath Sunfall’s oppressive heat. He wonders if there’s a place like that here, a mirror, somewhere warm and dry. So many machines spit fire; maybe it’s because that’s the greatest weakness here. All defenses are put into surviving the cold, and there’s nothing left for anything else.

Snowflakes drift aimlessly down to the floor like ash, torn from the storm overhead.

Was this place here like Zero Dawn, or is it just the bones of another relic from the Metal World, picked clean by time? Delvers have definitely been here: there are Banuk markings chalked in the far tunnel, and the access was easy enough that even that buffoon Gildun might have poked around.

This doesn’t seem like a place for humans; it’s too large and too stark. The ladder feels like an afterthought. Frozen roots wind across slick metal walls, incomprehensible equipment gnawed by centuries of ice. He puts his hand to his Focus, but there’s nothing else to see. Everything alive is dead, anything useful decayed by time.

Maybe this is how everything is. Maybe this is how it’s going to be. There are thick layers of fur between him and Aloy, and even though she’s pressed against him, it feels like she’s as far away as the moon. He tries to remember Meridian, the heat of the air matched by the heat of her body, and he tries to think about Itamen, about _possibility,_ about this kid that’s somewhere here with them.

This kid. This _kid_. It’s both nebulous and real, a face he can’t quite see and a voice he can’t quite hear. If he stares into the drifting snow, he can almost see footprints, and if he concentrates on the howling wind, he can almost make out what might be a laugh.

His mind is wandering. He’s getting too cold. He bites the inside of his cheek, the sharp pain a welcome jolt of clarity. He has to stay awake. What is it that the Banuk keep saying? Survive. Prevail. Something like that.

Erend is brute strength. He’s solid muscle. He was a big kid with an angry father. He’s good at holding still and he’s good at being hit. He might have more to offer, but right now, he’s just really, really cold.

At some point, he hears his name. “Erend,” Aloy says, the urgent tone of her voice telling him it’s not the first time she’s said it. “ _Erend._ ”

He blinks at her.

“Storm’s over.” She gestures to the ladder. “Let’s move.”

Take the hit and swallow it back. Survive. Prevail.

Maybe the Banuk have it right after all.  

 

****

 

They’re welcomed into Song’s Edge with furs and hot drinks. “I misjudged the Oseram,” one hunter says, clapping Erend on the shoulder as he passes. “Only the bravest of us fight such machines, but only the most foolish would dare travel in this storm. I can’t decide which you are, my friend.”

If Erend could feel his arms, he’d throw a punch.

He lets himself dissolve. There’s a tent that’s a sort of sauna, a bowl of hot coals in its center and a bone flagon set on the ground nearby. His lungs feel too small for the steam and he can’t stop shivering.

He’s pulled to consciousness by a Banuk healer. A shaman? He can’t tell the difference. Maybe there isn’t one. “Get some broth into you,” the man says, and then there’s savory warmth flooding his mouth and he can’t swallow fast enough.

Somewhere in his periphery, Aloy chokes out a curse. “Easy,” he hears someone say. “Little sips, nice and easy.”

Nothing is easy. They’re Banuk. Shouldn’t they know?

 

****

 

When he finally wakes up - properly wakes up, not just the fever-dream moments of semi-consciousness - everything hurts. He’s immediately slammed with the memory of waking up after the Spire, his muscles clenching at something terrifying and indistinct. Fire mingles with ice, smoke in his throat, _burning searing machines that roar with rockets and flame_ -

Erend makes himself breathe.

Movement comes slowly. What isn’t numb hurts like hell. When he goes to grimace, his face cracks like breaking stone, and when he heaves himself to his feet, the world rolls like he’s dancing on a barrel.

The Cut feels like one long hangover and he’s dry as bone.

He walks around and tries not to limp. His bad leg is stiff, his ankle throbbing with every step. He exchanges small talk with Burgrend, a conversation he’s too tired to follow and too tired to really remember, and trades a few shards for a lump of fire-kiln infused boar fat and some heavy sinew. His gambeson is in rough shape, but he can’t do more than jury rig repairs until he gets back to Meridian; the Banuk craftsmen create beautiful, sturdy leathers, but he hasn’t found anyone he’d trust with his own kit.

He goes back to the tent, stokes the fire, and starts warming the fat. Aloy’s asleep nearby, and he leans over to tuck the topmost fur more securely under her chin. There are deep bruises under her eyes, her nose and cheeks peppered with little boils of frostbite.

He wants her freckles back. He wants _her_.

Fire and spit, he wants _himself_. He feels like an old man, tired body and tired soul shuffling into the frigid day to piss.

He cleans and oils his gambeson. He cleans and oils his axe, frowning over a deep nick fresh from the last Fireclaw. When he gets back to Meridian, he’ll get the head replaced, but for now, all he can do is get out his whetstone and hope for the best.

High clouds turn bloody with the setting sun, and it reminds him so much of that day on the Spire that he has to go inside and curl around Aloy. Her hair is spilling out of her hood, a generous blaze of fire after a long slog through blowing drifts. He presses his face into the back of her head.

She reaches around to sleepily wind her fingers through his, and that little point of contact is so small and so huge that he almost cries.

 

****

 

There’s sleep and there’s waking up, and soup and quiet.

There’s the conversation that they’ve been putting off. He remembers another conversation, the two of them awkwardly sitting together when he’d barely had two legs and been sweating fear from his pores. Their future had hung between them then, too, as unavoidable as the sunrise.

He can’t sleep. He sits by the fire, poking at the coals with a stick.

“Come to bed.” Aloy mumbles. “It’s cold.”

“Thinking,” he says.

He’s sure she’s gone back to sleep when she sighs, dragging all the furs with her to come sit next to him. “Yeah,” she says. “Me too.” Her hair’s a mess, matted with little tangles like thistle leaves.

They stare out over the valley. It’s just past sunset, the stark crags painted with the blue of a fading bruise. A trio of Glinthawks squabble in the far distance.

The atmosphere is so heavy and so inexplicably sad that Erend can’t help but try to lighten it. “So...Ourea’s retreat is at the top of the shaman’s path.”

Aloy makes an affirmative noise.

“And anyone who completes the path is a shaman.”

“That’s how it goes, yes.”

“So…this kid’s a shaman.”

Her lips twitch. “I…probably.”

He thinks of stars and ardent sparks swirling up from a bright, hot fire.

“You really want this?” she asks quietly. “You’re not just saying it?”

He takes a breath. “I can’t lie. Not to you. Not about this.”

Silence drops between them like snow falling from a bough. She fishes a piece of jerky from somewhere under the furs and tears off a bite, chewing slowly.

“You know,” Aloy says, “if this had been a choice, I wouldn’t do it.”

“You _don’t_ -”

“Not like that.” She studies the jerky, worrying away a shred. “I just mean I wouldn’t seek it out. It never _occurred_ to me.” She turns to him. “ _Motherless_ \- it’s my whole _life_ , Erend. It’s what’s defined me, whether I want it to or not. I don’t have any context for this.”

He doesn’t either. “I had Ersa.” He swallows hard. “My mom, well.”

“When?” The question is soft and tinged with longing; he'd had a mouthful of bitter water when she'd grown up parched as dust. “How?”

It’s an old, familiar malignancy, that question. It’s unpleasantly warm and acrid, heavy as pus, and it’s never, ever changed. “Five,” he says. “Maybe six. I kind of...” He coughs. “Years blur together. Time gets lost.”

“Your dad?” she asks quietly.

As an adult, he has almost enough distance to pick up those fragments of memory and turn them over and over in his hands. There’d been fever, but she’d been sick a long time. He doesn’t remember her not being sick. He remembers her shoving him and Ersa under the table and screaming at his father with a voice that barely made a sound.

He doesn’t remember her face. He doesn’t remember her voice. Maybe she wasn’t hoarse after all; maybe he’s just too far away to recall. Maybe it hadn’t been a fever.

Maybe his father did kill her, and Erend’s brain just won’t let him know.

“We’ll make it better,” he makes himself say. “You and me. We have to.”

“It’s more than words,” she cautions.

“Look,” he says. “You have me. I swear on the forge, you do. I’m not perfect and I _know_ it, but even if you say no, you have me anyway. This kid?” He swallows hard. “This kid has more than that. I don’t exist except for this kid.”

She frowns. “Don’t say that.”

“Itamen,” he says quietly. “I will _die_ for him, and he’s not even mine.”

She twitches at that, a flinch that’s barely held back only because it’s not a surprise. “What if you have to? What if there’s something, and you _do_ die for him? What do we do? What do _I_ do?”

“What if _you_ -?” His throat closes up on the words. It’s his own worst-case scenario, the nightmare that will always live behind his eyelids. “What if- what if we’re the ones left behind?”

She bites her lip, eyes glimmering with tears. “This isn’t worth the risk, Erend. We can’t do this. We can’t-”

“What if it is? What if this is the _one_ _thing_ that’s worth the risk?”

“Is that a decision we really get to make?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?” He doesn’t mean to say it, but there it is. “I mean, I came from shit. You know that. I’m carrying around enough slag to fill the Daybrink, but I’m here. Fire and spit, Aloy, I'm here.”

She doesn’t say anything. She just pulls Rost’s bone pendant from beneath the furs to study it in the firelight.

Erend spent his childhood cowering in fear, frantically scrutinizing his own every little movement in a futile attempt to parse the source of his father’s anger. Ersa got them out, and he promptly spent years floating in a golden haze, cradling the warmth of the alcohol and calling it confidence. He hadn’t known he was dead until Aloy reached out and yanked him into the light.

He’s cold and he hurts, and they’re still in this stupid fucking land where the air freezes before it leaves his lungs, but even that, even though he’s exhausted and overwhelmed, he’s here with the woman he loves and the child she carries, and there’s nowhere else he could possibly be.  

“This seems like a question that should always be no,” Aloy says. “Who I am, what I was made to do - HEPHAESTUS won’t stop, and even if it does, there are still all the other subroutines. GAIA is gone, and I- I’ll just be- I’m holding all these ropes together, I’m the key to the doors no one else can open, and I don’t know _how_ to be a mother. I don’t have _time..._ ” She brings her hands up like she’s going to scrub at her face, but at the last minute seems to remember the frostburn and ends up just making an awkward, aimless movement. “The thing is,” she says hoarsely, “I really, _really_ want to try.”

“Yeah.” His eyes are suddenly hot and blurring and he looks out over the mountains, trying to swallow it back. “It’s just...do you know how many times I told myself the same thing about you?”

She goes still.

“I know how I was,” he makes himself say. “I know how I _am_. You’re faster on your own.”

“Faster isn’t always better,” she croaks.

“I don’t always have to take the hit.” He takes a breath. “I meant what I said before: you, me, this kid, ten kids, everything: I want it all and I want you with me. If that’s not what you want, that’s okay, but I need you to know.”

She sighs, and tucks her knees under her chin. “What if this is a mistake?”

“Just because it’s a terrible idea doesn’t make it a mistake,” he points out.

She almost chuckles, leaning her head on his shoulder, and he thinks she’s fallen asleep when she finally sighs. “We’re not having ten kids.”

 _You said two minutes, too_ , he almost says, but her hair is in his mouth and his heart is so full he can’t even breathe.


	81. Chapter 81

Erend is brute strength and solid muscle, and he knows the moment when a load is given away. He knows what it feels like to be overwhelmed by weight and the relief that comes when it’s finally set down.

This feels like that. This feels like the moment with the Sawtooth, her arrow and his axe meeting to multiply their strength. This is a winning blow, a gust of wind, a kite flying high above gleaming rooftops. This is a lungful of air when he hadn’t known he’d needed more. This is the first moment she’d kissed him and all the moments after.

This is confirmation and commitment. This is the woman he loves and the impossible child they both fiercely want.

He looks at Aloy and sees a sparkle in her tired eyes. He sees that little quirk of a smile he’d die a thousand deaths to see, that little smile he’s missed so very, very much.

 

****

 

It’s one of the crystalline days where the sky is as blue as deep ice and just as cold. He’s in the tent that serves as Burgrend’s storefront, stripping wire from a Watcher carapace. “Don’t see why you’d want those little pieces,” Burgrend keeps saying. “Only reason I’m not charging you is because I couldn’t sell those to a Scrapper.”

“Tinkering,” Erend says. His Focus outlines the wire’s path, and he twists a finger beneath an ice-cold plate to disconnect the clip.

“I’ll never understand,” the trader says, shaking his head. “My daughter Varga does the same thing. It’s all wires and plate, plate and wires. Damn near magic, if you ask me-” He looks up. “Hi Naltuk. What can I do for you?”

Ourea’s apprentice is now the shaman for Song’s Edge, standing strong under his new headdress. Shimmering blue cables are caught at the back of his head like a machine’s answer to hair, and they sway as Naltuk nods in greeting. “Burgrend.” He gestures to Erend. “Aloy asks for you. Will you follow?”

He blinks. “Yeah, sure. Always.”

They walk through Song’s Edge, a crowd gradually converging around them. “What’s going on?” Erend asks. “Why are they following us?”

“I don’t know,” Naltuk says. “She just said to come.”

Aratak is standing at the edge of one of the dye pools, the squirrel tails on the edge of his parka waving gently in the breeze. Aloy’s right beside him, the sun caught in the bright halo of her hair. She’s holding a lump of ash-blue clay in her hands, the wet pigment dripping onto the pale stone at her feet.

Aratak looks from Aloy to Erend, and gestures to the mud. “This Carja foolishness seems excessive, but since this is what is asked for, I will preside.”

There’s a long moment when the words don’t actually make sense, and all he can focus on is Aloy and the glowing vulnerability in her copper-green eyes. “If you still mean what you said, Erend-”

He’s already plunging his hands into the water.

He doesn’t have to think. He drags two fingers through oxide red and stands back up, hands shaking. “I mean it,” he croaks. “Aloy, I meant it then, and I mean it now. I will always mean it.”

“Do it,” she says.

Erend doesn’t hesitate. The Carja draw long, simple lines, but he can’t do that. He starts at the bridge of her nose, drawing two shuddery stripes around the delicate hollow of her eyes and across her cheeks. He gently wipes his thumbs across her chin, a dab of oche under the pink of her lips.

She’s light and life and heat, a brilliant flame in human form. He’s no artist, but the color blazes across her pale skin, her freckles rising like sparks.

He needs to say something. He wants to make a speech or shout to the sky or say something poetic and worthy, but the words clog his throat as they all try to come out at once. The only thing he can do is cup her face as the the world spins around him. “You promised me two minutes,” he tells her. “I promise you the rest of my life.”

Aloy, who doesn’t touch, pulls the damp clay down his forehead, tracing his eyebrows and putting the lightest brush of cold on his eyelids. Aloy, who doesn’t trust, takes his hands in her own with bruising force. “I thought I was looking for my mother,” she says hoarsely. “I thought I’d find her and maybe-” She takes a breath. “I found you instead, and Erend, I never, ever want to let you go.”

His heart is pressing the air out of his lungs, the look in her eyes burning him down to his core, so he does the only thing he can do: he kisses her, and fire meets sky in a smear of color.

Aratak finally coughs. “Is it done, then?”

It’s never done. It’s the start.

 

****

 

There’s a celebration. The Banuk are nonplussed about the clay, a quaint outlander ceremony, but the sentiment is the same.

“When a couple wish to join here,” Aratak says, “they declare a quarry and go out to hunt. When they return victorious, they are married. A partner must be a partner in all things.” He looks them over thoughtfully. “Your songs harmonize. This is good.”

It’s happened so fast, Erend doesn’t even know what to think. It feels like falling, the moment of weightlessness before the impact. There are handshakes and felicitations, and from the Oseram jolly offerings of alcohol that he doesn’t accept. It’s not even hard. He’s already drunk with happiness, tilting through the village with Aloy at his side. “You married me,” he says, leaning in close to bury his face in her hair. “We’re _married._ ”

“I was there, idiot,” says the woman who is now his wife, softening the words with a kiss.

The party ends almost before it began, because this is the Cut and that’s what it does. A pair of Fireclaws have been sighted to the east, so Erend and Aloy and, for once, Aratak, set out.

As they walk, she reaches over and snags Erend’s mittened hand in hers, offering a shy little smile. The red ochre is already starting to flake from her skin, but hope blazes amid the frost-chill. “There’s no turning back on this,” she says, as if she doesn’t quite believe it herself. She’s not talking about the Fireclaws.

“Nope,” he agrees, breathless at the prospect. “There’s not.”

 

****

 

It’s somehow fitting that getting married is a thing that happens suddenly, a frisson of sunlight between storms. Avad and Talanah’s wedding had lasted two weeks, but that’s who they are: two powerful people whose union promised a dynasty. Aloy isn’t like that, so neither is Erend. They’re fast and light, a double-punch strike before running off to the next objective.

It feels like a punch, the shock before the force of the hit sinks in. There are machines to kill, so they kill them. All the months of agony fall away like blown plate, like a sore tooth that’s suddenly healed. Erend goes to prod the familiar pain because it’s a reflex he can’t avoid, but then _they’re married_ floods in and he can’t keep away the big, stupid grin.

By Naltuk’s estimation, the two Fireclaws are the last that escaped the mountain, and with their defeat, the Cut becomes a measure more safe. Song’s Edge swells with relief, many voices raising in song, but Aloy immediately retreats to their tent and curls into the furs like a squirrel.

It’s close to nightfall when she finally wakes up. Erend’s oiling his axe, the oil gone thick and cloudy in the frosty air. In the last few hours, thin, high clouds have started creeping over the mountains. “You want to wait here for a few days and rest up?” he asks. She’s done what she’s set out to do - climb the damn mountain and solve the mystery of the Daemonism - as well as a dozen other objectives. “Or do we head straight back to Meridian?”

“Meridian,” she says firmly.

They have the Scrapper radar and all the other materials for a bauble, but as soon as Aloy sits down, she’s out. He leaves for ten minutes, and comes back to find her slumped into herself, the pieces forgotten in her lap. When she wakes up, she takes a square of crumbling parchment and makes a rough diagram with charcoal. “My eyes are starting to blur,” she grumbles, drawing some of the wires with a nugget of ochre.

After the fourth time she falls asleep, he eases the parts out of her grasp and sets himself up. He’s seen her build one a hundred times. He’s got the diagram and a Focus of his own. Maybe he can do this.

The diagram is fairly straightforward. He can’t read well; he’d been approaching proficient before they’d left Meridian, but he’s been out of practice for so long that the letters easily slide into meaningless shapes. Still, the Focus highlights wire paths that he sees but doesn’t recognize, and he slowly starts comparing them to the lines on the diagram.

“Blue,” Aloy mumbles sleepily.

He’s so startled he almost screams.

“Blue,” she repeats, fumbling off a mitten to point at a bundle of wires. “Are you colorblind? That’s green.”

He squints, and damn her, she’s right. “How the hell can you see that from all the way over there?”

“ _Blue_ ,” she says. “No, the other blue.”

“Which one-”

“That one, or you’ll going to short the whole thing.”

He moves the wire.

“Better. I’ll kill you if you ruin it.” Her eyes start to slide closed, and she adds around a huge yawn, “Sparker’s in my bag.”

He fully expected to get yelled at for even trying, but her drowsy effort to give him the sparker is painfully endearing.

His wife. She’s his _wife_ and they’re having a baby, and Erend is so in love, he almost can’t breathe.

Thick clouds slowly bury the sunset, and by nightfall, heavy flakes start to come down, so thick they almost make an audible sound as they fall. Erend stokes the fire, adds another fur onto the pile that is Aloy, and settles back to work.

“Didn’t take you for a tinkerer!” Gildun exclaims, stepping into the firelight. “Why, when I-”

“Working,” Erend warns him.

“Got it!” The delver gives a smart salute. “Best of luck, my boy! I hope...er, whatever that is...succeeds! If you ever need a buyer-”

Erend growls, and he scuttles away.

 

****

 

One of the benefits to facial hair is that he can tuck lengths of wire into his beard for easy retrieval. He feels particularly clever, sorting them in colors across his chin.

“You look _ridiculous_ ,” Aloy says fondly.

“Yeah, but it works.” He ever-so-gingerly eases the sparker around the final piece. “And now, so does _this_.”

She reaches out and he carefully places the bauble in her hands. She turns it over, scrutinizing the welds and gently tugging the wires to confirm their connections hold.

“It’s not terrible,” she pronounces.

A huge weight sloughs off his shoulders like heavy snow from a bough. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Don’t let it go to your head.” But her eyes are shining, and fire and spit, he loves her.

It doesn’t actually work, of course, because he’s reversed the power cell in its seat, but she turns it around and the bauble hums to life.

He can’t help himself. “Here I was, thinking you said these things are hard.”

“You know you’re smarter than that,” she says quietly.

They’re both exhausted. It’s cold and they’re tired. They’ve done what needs to be done, and now they can leave.

They’re _married_.

“How’s the power?” he asks.

She considers. “Not great. It might get us out of the Cut, but not any further.”

“We’ve already proven it doesn’t work here,” he says. “We can go low and quiet until we’re past the Grave Hoard.”

“We’ll have to.” She glances up at the sky, gauging the weather. “Leave in the morning?”

They pack. There are last-minute trades to make and conversations to be had. “When you’re back in Meridian,” Burgrend tells them, “if you ever need anything, find my buddy Ohtur. Tell him I sent you.” He claps Erend on the shoulder. “It’s been an honor, my friend. You two kids take care of yourselves.”

“Thanks,” Erend says, and means it.

Aratak takes Aloy’s hands in his own. “We owe you a debt,” he says solemnly. “We have much to learn from CYAN, but she is a good teacher.”

“She’ll help you,” Aloy promises. “Trust her. Ourea did.”

There isn’t any more information Aloy can glean from the volcano’s AI herself. “I’ve downloaded everything that was there,” she says to Erend, cinching closed a bag of supplies. “It’ll take me awhile to work through it, but I know there wasn’t anything else.”

“Will you let me look through it?” It’s a huge thing to ask, but dammit, he made a bauble that very nearly worked.

She’s already nodding. “I’ll copy it over.”

The sky is cloudy, but the Banuk watchers are confident it won’t storm. At this point, Erend honestly doesn’t care. He hefts his pack and adjusts his axe.

“Ready for this?” Aloy asks, as the path away from Song’s Edge curves into the mountain.

Erend grins. “I thought you’d never ask.”


	82. Chapter 82

They hit the Grave Hoard just as the sun splits the clouds.

“This is the first time I’ve actually felt my nose,” Erend says.

“It’s still there.”

“Could have fooled me.”

The snow thins, heavy drifts giving way to mossy stone. Grasses start mounding up beneath the frost, crocus buds cautiously unfurling. As the death of humanity looms at his back, Erend sees a sprig of ember thrust up through the snow, cheerful and bright.

Suddenly, he’s back in the Embrace, wandering around a weird celebration in a backwater village. He looks for Olin but the delver’s been cornered by one of the Nora, and Erend’s heart skids to a stop in his chest.

Hair like the sun, eyes uncompromising and bright. Leathers that are new but not quite tailored, as if someone’s taken a guess at their future owner. One of Olin’s jewels perched at her ear.

He hadn’t expected her. He’d been fumbling through his life, a drunk idiot, a feckless moth, and then without warning he’d been incinerated by her gaze.

Now, she’s drawn herself up short, those same eyes looking him over. “Erend?”

On impulse, he reaches down to pluck the flower and leans over to tuck it behind her ear. The peppery scent of its milk clings to his fingers.

She frowns, scanning his face, and yeah, only Aloy could view this tiny gift with suspicion. Any other woman might have seen it as it is - romantic, sincere, a little silly - but she isn’t just a pretty girl from the middle of nowhere. She’s a firestorm, a hurricane, a terrifying force of personality and nature, and somehow, despite all logic and sense, she’s chosen to marry _him_. “I love you,” he says, the words tight in his throat.

She ducks her head, but he still sees her smile.

 

****

  


The Embrace swallows them with green and gold. As they descend into the valley, trees rise with thick leafy crowns, songbirds’ heady warble filtering through the branches. Underfoot, the loam is crisp and pleasant, the occasional squirrel darting away.

“Summer,” Aloy breathes, pushing back her hood and turning her face up to the sun. “I’d almost forgotten.” She slowly spins in place like a child, arms outstretched, her hair catching the light like dry tinder.

In this moment, the Cut falls away like mist. All Erend can do is just lean on his axe and watch her, his lungs swelling with warm, sweet air and his heart thudding in his chest.

This is his future. This is what he’s wanted and now this is what he has. The vague dream he’s kept covetously sheltered in his ribs, the little nugget made of painful hope, is melting with the snow. It was never real. This, this right here, the woman laughing and dizzily stumbling through bee-filled heathers, the child she carries and the promise she’s made: _this_ is what’s real. This is what Erend Vanguardsman gets to cherish and protect.

It’s strange how peace and exhilaration can coexist, but they do, twining together like cord. “Marry me,” he calls out.

Aloy doesn’t hesitate. “Already did.”

“I love you too much. Let’s do it again.”

“You sop,” she says, but she dances up anyway to take his face in her hands and kiss him.

 

****

 

He’s jolted from a deep sleep by an explosion, and his first instinct is _Fireclaw_. He’s already halfway up, axe in hand, before he realizes what’s happened.

It’s a Strider from a nearby herd, felled by an arrow through the blaze tank on its back. In the darkness, the others flare to red and bolt into the hills.

“Hunters,” Aloy says tightly, pulling him back down into the tall grass where they’ve made camp. “We’re so close to Hollow Fort. I should have known.”

The outcast settlement. His heart pounds, the surge of panic still rushing through his lungs. “What do we do?”

“Hide.” It’s their only reasonable option. They’re less than a hundred paces away, but Aloy’s hand is still a mess of deep bruises and healing electrical burns. She can draw her longbow, but she’s still too shaky for the accuracy a silent strike would require.

Erend is far from being a competent archer himself. The only thing he can hit is his own wrist with the string. “How many do you see?”

“Use your Focus,” she hisses.

He keeps forgetting it’s there. It’s still a novelty, not yet an instinct. Annoyed, he thumbs it to life; two human figures immediately flash into blue, and further away crouch another three.

It’d be two against five, plus more if the machines get brave. It would be close combat, and even with the advantage of their Focuses, it’s more than Erend wants to risk.

Instead, he and Aloy lie on their bellies in the grass, barely breathing. The hunters come and inspect the machine corpse. “Thought I saw two Banuk come through yesterday,” one of them says. “They might still be here.”

“Should have gotten them _then._ ” his companion growls.

“What good’s a Banuk?”

“Good for whatever they’re carrying, idiot.”

Erend shifts, tensed and ready to launch.

After what feels like an eternity, the hunters loot their quarry and wander back across the river. Their blue bodies tremble and fade into the distance.

“We need to go,” Aloy finally says, her voice almost lost in the whispering grass.

They go.

 

****

 

Now that they’re headed home, it seems to take years. Every rock and stream becomes an agonizing reminder of how far they have left to go. She pacifies them Striders, but even then, it feels like he’s mired in the journey forever.

It’s still summer, but this far north it looks like fall is starting to creep in, the lichens turning ochre and yellow against the stony hills. The first few crisp leaves blow across the dusty path, but when they come across a creek, the water is still sun-warmed, languid and clear as it makes its way through rounded stones.  

“How long do you think we’ve been gone?” Erend asks as they stop to refill their waterskins. A trout flashes beneath the surface, flicker-quick and then gone.

Aloy’s leaning over to splash water on her face. “Since solstice?” She glances up at the sliver of moon, ticking time off with her fingers, and one hand absently goes to her belly. “Three months. Almost four.”

They’re having a baby. A _baby_. It’s a truth as real as his own heartbeat, but it still hits him like a thunderclap every single time. He’s dazed and _delighted_ and scared as hell. Her eyes dare him to stumble, and he can’t.

“Only four?” He makes himself frown. “They haven’t even had time to miss us.”

She huffs.

“We should make a vacation of it,” he goes on. “Take it easy. Maybe swing by Pitchcliff, knock off a few Stormbirds.”

“We can’t waste-”

“ _Sunfall_. Haven’t been there in ages. We’ll do a circuit: the entire Sundom in one trip.” She’s still scowling, so he soldiers ahead. “We’ll get souvenirs from each place. A ridiculous little ceramic- no, we’ll get _tattoos-_ ”

She bites hard on the inside of her cheeks and there- he has her. “We’re not getting tattoos.”

“You say that now,” he says smugly. “Just wait.”

 

****

 

After the brutal hunter-killers of the Cut, the familiar machines of the warmer lands are almost welcome. There are Glinthawks and wandering Chargers, herds of industrious Grazers and their attendant Watchers. Aloy keeps the bauble tucked against her chest, the power turned just high enough to make them invisible. As they creep along the river, one of the Watchers on the other side raises its head, chirping curiously, but doesn’t pursue.

He wishes they’d had more time with the bauble in the Cut. They never got to find out where it fit within the hierarchy of machine control, and if Aloy has any theories, she’s not sharing. The Daemonism resisted her staff, so he’s pretty sure it would have resisted the bauble, but there’s no way of knowing.

The power cell doesn’t last as long as they’d hoped. They aren’t even six days out of the Cut when it dies. Aloy reseats the power cell, determinedly checking each of the bauble’s wires before biting down on her gauntlet to stifle a furious scream.

There isn’t anything to say. They’re travelling hard. The initial bloom of joy from being out of the Cut was abruptly ended by the hunters, and now the threat of the Embrace looms like the Grave Hoard. They’re skirting the edge of Nora territory and his shoulder aches with the memory.

Out of the smelter and into the forge. So it goes.

It’s long past dark when they finally hunker down in the relative safety of an ancient ruin, ivy-covered brick and rusted steel providing a bit of comfort against the sharp night breeze. A pair of Sawtooths stomp in the distance, their lights glowing faintly in the chilly mist.

Erend remembers this part of the Embrace. The windmills from the Metal World are just west, and past that, the valley pinches closed at Dawn’s Sentinel. It’s might be three days of good travel, but his bad leg screams with each step and he’s so very, very far from good.

As soon as they’ve stopped, Aloy slings her pack to the ground and disappears behind the crumbling chimney. She’s already forcefully asserted she doesn’t want company when she’s being sick, so he just kindles a small fire, his heart aching.

Eventually, she drops down beside him, puffy-eyed and disheveled. “Found this today,” he says, offering the cup of tea. “Ginger reed.”

She gratefully accepts it, putting her face into the steam. “Ourea said it would get better, but she neglected to give a timeline.”

“We’ll get through this.”

“I _know_ we will, I just-” She ducks her head between her legs and takes a handful of deep breaths. When she comes back up, the tears in her eyes have very little to do with the nausea. “It’s just a little hard right now.”

He wants to say they can stop and rest, but they’ve already had that fight. Without the bauble, they’re sneaking through dangerous territory, and they don’t have any allies. They’d seen a hunting party the day before - proper Nora, skirting the northern range of approved hunting grounds - and had to double-back into the foothills to stay undetected. There’s a Cauldron tucked into a nearby mountain and the machine presence is heavy.

“If I had a Glinthawk, I could wire a solar array,” Aloy mumbles, resting her forehead against the cup. “One. I only need one.”

He can’t respond. It’s the same thing she’s been saying for days. They can’t risk downing one without arousing its flock, and they haven’t found one already dead.

She manages a little food before nodding off, and he banks the coals for the night, curling up with her underneath the bones of an ancient staircase. It starts raining in the early hours, cold little drops that cling to the furry edges of his parka. Most of their supplies had been lost coming into Song’s Edge and despite his best efforts, some things couldn’t be replaced; he’s spent the last week regularly mourning one item or another, and right now, he really, really misses the waxed canvas tarp.

The Cut was necessary, he reminds himself. The Daemonism had been novel, and now they know slightly more about HEPHAESTUS than they did before. The suffering has worth.

 _Your king needs you,_ Ersa reminds him in his head. His king, his Vanguard, his fellow denizens of the world: they all need him, and It’s too much. What he wants right now is to sit with his pregnant wife, holding her hair back if she’ll let him and having tea waiting if she won’t. Simple. Uncomplicated. 

Alber was one of the first of the Vanguard to truly settle in Meridian. He’d been a trader in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he’d managed to escape the Sun Ring with a Carja woman who would eventually become his wife. Erend had been too busy being Ersa’s idiot brother to pay much attention, but he remembers being baffled by Alber’s commitment to being tied down. “We’re happy,” Alber had said at the announcement of his second child. “We’re just so happy.”

 _Happy_ does not even begin to describe what Erend is feeling.

He’s - overwhelmed. It’s hitting him from all sides and he feels so _small_ , but he doesn’t want to give any of it away. He’s beyond tired. His bad leg hurts so much in the mornings he almost can’t walk out to piss. Aloy is brittle and exhausted, but there are spare moments when she’ll look at him with a ghost of a smile and he’ll be back to buzzing with a frantic joy he’s never felt.

She married him. She _married_ him. Aloy, life and light and heat, married Erend, the idiot drunk who somehow came to be the person by her side. They’re having a baby. He’s going to be a father.

He’s going to be a father, and he has to be better than his own. Despite how furious he is with himself about his slip in Song’s Edge, despite being miles and miles from the nearest bottle, he’s tired and he _hurts_ , and he can feel the old thin hunger seeping out from his bones.

The baby. Think about the baby. Think about Itamen, about something like Itamen. Some _one_ like Itamen, someone who is their own, someone as red-haired and irascible as their mother. That’s Erend’s hearth, all of them together: him and Aloy and their child. It’s real. It’s _here_.

It’s worth every moment of pain, and Dawn’s Sentinel is only three days away.  


	83. Chapter 83

 It should be three days to Dawn’s Sentinel, but as they’re weaving their way through the ancient windmills, Aloy pulls him up short. “Thunderjaw.”

He’s getting used to his Focus; he’d almost seen it when she did. It wasn’t there when they’d gone through before, and its path is a wide sweep across the valley. “Go around or go stealth?”

They can't risk it. Going around means heading up into the hills, so they carefully pick their way through loose gravel and prickly sage. The wind gets fierce, dust mingling with tiny, dry ice pellets, and he pulls what’s left of his scarf up around his face.

Erend is _so_ done with ice.

It’s a day, and then a day, and then another day. A storm rolls in on the final afternoon, a thick wall of heavy mist and sheeting rain, and the machine presence is too heavy to try stumbling through the wet. He and Aloy take refuge in a hulking derelict, easing across the crumbling rust to hide in the least-leaky corner.

Sunset eventually bleeds through the clouds. “We should go,” Aloy mumbles, making no effort to move. She’s curled between his leg and the packs, her anorak draped over her shoulders like a blanket. “We’re so close.”

“We’re staying,” Erend says.

“We’re almost there-”

“You’re asleep.”

She makes a frustrated noise, but pulls her anorak back up over her head.

It’s _nice_ to go to bed before the sun’s gone down. He makes a small fire and roasts a rabbit they’d caught earlier. The structure - he almost recognizes it as some flying thing, but he’s not sure - retains the heat well and if he closes his eyes, he can almost pretend they’re somewhere safe and familiar.

He’s dozing pleasantly when Aloy suddenly rockets to her feet, one hand going to her Focus as the other catches her balance on the rusting steel wall. There’s a long, shocked pause, and then she snaps, “Hello to you, too.”

Erend’s body goes cold and he glances around despite himself, as if Aloy’s silent partner could somehow be standing nearby.

She doesn’t move. “Interesting is an excellent word.” There’s another pause, and her hand on the wall balls into a fist. “Firebreak wasn’t the only _interesting_ thing I learned in the Cut, Sylens. Heard some things about the Bauk Conclave, too. No- no, I’m not going to stop. You left me hanging after the Spire. I listened to you for a _year,_  did all of your dirty work, and all I got was silence. Not a thank you, nothing. You didn’t even check to see if I was still alive.” She takes a breath. “Right, you can see everything. My mistake. You’re _welcome_ , by the way.”

Erend slowly gets to his feet, but she waves him off. “We both know if I knew where HEPHAESTUS was, you wouldn’t be bothering to ask.” Pause. “If you’ve got any ideas, now’s the time to share.

His axe is useless, but he still reaches for it and its solid, grounding weight.

“What-? _No_.” Her face goes hard and angry. “No, I won’t, and- it’s not your choice, Sylens. I did what GAIA made me for, and- no, I owe you _nothing_.”

Another pause.

“Like you did with the hunters the Banuk sent after you?” she says sharply. “Your past and your secrets might be your own, but my life is _mine_ , and _you_ would do well to remember that.”

When she turns to Erend, she’s wearing an expression he’s never seen. Her jaw is set, her eyes gone black with fury. She boils like a Daemonic thing contained and ready to strike, and then she stalks out into the darkness.

This isn’t the woman who sleeps by his side. This is Aloy, tracker of killers, cold as the steel tips of her arrows. In that nebulous time between Ersa and the Spire, he’d heard stories of murdered cultists and executed bandits, and even though he’d known the truth in his gut, this is the first time he actually believes.

This is the woman took over a werak because she refuses to accept anything other than her own blazing truth. He drowns in the wild firestorm of her hair, held captive in the hottest part of the flame, and so he forgets how utterly terrifying she can be.

 _Sylens._ What he knows about Sylens could fit through the eye of his axe. He remembers Aloy taking off her Focus in Brightmarket and again after the Spire. As long as she wears her Focus, she has no privacy. She occasionally tucks it into the little pouch he’d had made, but she relies on her Focus like he relies on his own ears, and it’s easy for both of them to forget there was ever any interjecting stranger. He doesn’t know if she’s gotten complacent or just comfortable.

 _He’s_ the reason she’s gotten comfortable. He’s been calming her down. They’ve been slowly taming each other, and he should have been thinking. He takes the hits. He watches her back. She’s known exactly what she was risking when she gave Erend his Focus, but she’d done it anyway. She’d _stated_ the risk, but he’s been so focused on getting her out of the Cut and now out of the Embrace that any other threat has been tucked into the back of his mind.

He hears her talking, the words indistinct and terse. She’s on the roof of the structure, cross-legged and staring into the darkness as she confers with the ally she hates most. Across the river, a herd of Striders spreads out like glowbugs, their lenses soft and blue in the damp air. Their Watcher nervously makes its patrol.

Aloy shifts on the roof, still deep in conversation. There’s a chill settling in in the wake of the rain, and there's nothing he can do, so Erend heads inside.

He wants to listen. He wants to be included. She’d left him at the bottom of Thunder’s Drum, and okay, he can understand why, but it still tastes like betrayal in his mouth. He can’t protect her - he can’t _help_ her - if he doesn’t know exactly what they’re up against.

If he’s being honest, he’s jealous someone else gets to see a side of her that he doesn’t, and immediately feels a flush of guilt.

He oils his gambeson. He pokes at the fire. He activates his Focus and swipes through its functions, Aloy a bright, steady presence somewhere above. The letters are coming back, some even arranged in recognizable words. There are so many layers of color, blue-pink-white stacked like transparent plates. He thinks about Zero Dawn, about Eleuthia, about Apollo’s hollow shell.

He’s almost back to dozing when the voice comes into his own ear, honey-smooth and dark as amber. “Erend, I take it? Welcome.”

He’s too shocked to speak and too paralyzed to move. He should have expected this - he should have _known-_

“I see she’s given you a Focus. A significant gift. I would hope you’re smart enough to recognize its significance.”

Heat flashes through Erend's body. “I have an idea, yeah.”

“Good,” says the man called Sylens. “Let me make this clear: you interest me only as it pertains to Aloy and no further. I will not repeat myself. Whatever you are, whatever you want, you slow her down. You distract her. You waste her time.”

“I-”

Sylens continues as if he hasn’t heard. “She doesn’t have time for you. She isn’t what you want her to be.”

“And what is that, exactly?”

“A pretty girl from the middle of nowhere.”

There’s a long moment of ringing silence. Sylens _has_ heard everything, he’s heard _everything_ , and Erend is so furious and nakedly exposed that he can’t make a sound.

“Do you honestly think you’re equipped for this?” the unseen man goes on. “You, a soldier who can barely read your own name? You think you know what you’ve seen. Perhaps you think she’s explained it. Perhaps _she_ thinks she has. Let me put this in terms even you can understand: you can’t comprehend the magnitude of this. You are a single speck of dust on the face of a mountain. If you have any sense of self-preservation, you’ll walk away.”

“I _won’t_ -”

“What are you hoping for, exactly? A little wife in a cozy home? That’s beneath her.” Sylens snorts with disdain. “She’s meant for far greater things.”

“You don’t get to decide-”

“Her future was decided before she was created. I’m simply here to remind.”

“She-”

Aloy suddenly yanks the Focus from his temple and stands there with it clenched in her fist, breathing hard.  

They stare at each other.

“What did he say?” she growls. “Erend, what did he tell you?”

The whole thing’s happened so fast he almost can’t process. She’s encased in a fierce, defensive anger that sputters and flares, and it’s all Erend can do just to meet her eyes.

“Nothing,” he says, the words shoving themselves out on their own. “Nothing I didn’t already know.”

It’s not the answer she’s expecting, and something in her face goes tight and scared. “What?”

His mouth is suddenly dry, his heart pounding in the meat of tongue. “Remember when you took me to see Zero Dawn?” he says. “You told me I might not love you after that.”

She opens her mouth and closes it again, her teeth making an audible click.

“And remember what I said?”

“This is _different-_ ”

“It’s not.” She’s shaking, a jagged chasm of vulnerability. Solitude is in her bones like alcohol is in his, and right now, Sylens is her Gildun. She’s exhausted and overwhelmed, a raw, gaping wound, and the man in her ear is offering exactly what she’s afraid of hearing. Solitude sings that no one loves her. Solitude whispers that she isn’t part of this world, that all she is is a key to impossible locks, and that by pursuing something more human, she’s betraying the reason for her existence and, by extension, the world.

He can’t fight that because he _knows_. She can tell him a thousand times he’s more than his father’s son, she can cajole and demand, but at the end of the day, she can’t change what’s in his blood, and she can’t change what’s in her own. “Remember what I said?”

She doesn’t answer.

“I said I would never change my mind, and I won’t.” He reaches over and snags her arm as she tries to pull away. “Listen. _Listen_. I just promised you the rest of my life, and fire and spit, I _mean_ that. _He-_ ”

“He’s right,” she snaps. “There are things I need to-”

“I’m following _you_ ,” he says forcefully. “Not some key, not some copy. _You_. I have your back. Maybe I’m not enough, but whatever I am is all yours and I will _never_ go anywhere else.”

He wants to shake her, to take her face in his hands and kiss her, to dig past the burning sorrow in her eyes and remind her _this is what married means_ , but it’s all words. All he has to offer at this moment is words, words like weapons to fight whatever poison keeps being dripped into her ear.

He can see her trying. He can see her untangling the burrs in her mind, taking whatever Sylens has said and painfully tugging it out of her skin. She’s still wearing her Focus even though his is clutched in her hand, her fingers rubbing an unconscious circle on its surface. Hers is an extension of her being, as much a part of her body as her eyes.

Solitude keeps her safe. Solitude has served her well. He’s suddenly very, very certain that Sylens has preyed on that. A key only slides into a lock when it’s unencumbered, and a brilliant woman will go where she’s told when she has nothing to lose.

“Just because the doors think you’re Elisabet doesn’t mean that’s who you are,” he says quietly. “Is that what he told _you_?” She’s silent for far too long, and he has to ask. “What did he say?”

She glances down at her hands. “Nothing,” she finally says, her eyes welling up as she makes a vague gesture to the world outside the structure. “Everything. It just keeps getting worse.”

“I have your back,” Erend says. “I’m not perfect, but I’m here.”

“What if it changes?” she asks quietly. “What if someday you aren’t?”

“You, me and this kid. There’s nowhere else I will ever be.”

Aloy eases down beside him, settling herself carefully amid the rust and damp moss, and offers him back his Focus. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

He remembers Zero Dawn and the steady confidence of the woman with Aloy’s face. She’d taken one look at her world and seen that it was lost, but she’d fought for it anyway.

In his marrow, in the smallest, most tender parts of him, Erend has known. HADES chased Aloy without mercy. There’s no way HEPHAESTUS isn’t doing the same, especially after Thunder’s Drum. He doesn’t know what the pursuit looks like. Maybe HEPHAESTUS is combing its fingers through the bauble, analyzing the code and untangling it like a net. Maybe it’s simple brute force: hunter-killer machines gradually growing stronger and more clever, smelling out the heat of her body and the shape of her face like the Ancient Metal Demons. He shivers, thinking about the Grave Hoard, about the impossible leviathan that punched into the mountain to drink the lives within.

It’s only a matter of time. They have to solve it. If they don’t, he and Aloy will be watching for the rest of their lives, back-to-back and weapons drawn, their child tucked behind their legs.

Sylens is right. Erend _can’t_ comprehend the magnitude, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t recognize his own ignorance. He doesn’t have to wield a weapon to understand its might; he was the cowering kid of an unpredictable father, and he knows down to his bones the brutal consequence of complacency.

Ersa’s voice rings in his ears - _knowledge is your sharpest weapon_ \- and he suddenly realizes that Sylens is exactly like Dervahl: a master without a soul, someone who’s given up the most human part of themselves in the pursuit of some nebulous understanding.

The Metal World died because of a man like Sylens, and it lived because of a woman like Aloy.

He looks over at Aloy. She’s massaging the last two fingers on her right hand, the ones still stiff and numb from the Daemonic tower. The lightning-shaped bruises are almost gone, green and fading like the sky-smoke of the Cut. There’s a long scar down her jaw, only one of many. Her body is a moonscape of slices and pocks where the world has tried to break her.

It tells her she can’t want what she wants. Erend can’t counter that, not really. All he can do is stand beside her and tell her that he wants the same thing.

“He told me the baby is a mistake,” she says, staring at a point somewhere amid the coals.

“Unexpected,” Erend says. “Not a mistake.”

That makes her look up, the firelight shifting in her hair. “Unexpected?”

He grins. “Like you.”

He doesn’t think she’s going to respond until she abruptly exhales and drops her hands to her knees. “You make things so hard, you know that?”

“Hard?”

Aloy sucks her teeth. “I was fine without you. I was _good_ until you showed up.”

“You married me,” he points out.

Her expression softens. “I did.” Carefully, she eases her way around the fire to come tuck herself under his arm. “Erend, I’m really, really glad you’re here.”

He kisses her forehead, breathing in the heavy musk of her hair.

“..do you ever think about just...running away?” she asks quietly.

He snorts. “All the damn time.”

“Where would we go?”

“Anywhere.” He picks up the fantasy, turning it over in his hands and examining it like a precious gem. “I...think about us in a little house somewhere. Days from civilization. You, me, a kid or two.” He swallows. “We let the world end.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I know.” The truth is that he and Aloy have never been alone. There’s been a silent third party, listening and taking notes. Even if they tried to run away, the voice in her ear would just find them, and even if Sylens didn't, someday, HEPHAESTUS will.

Elisabet wouldn’t run. He remembers Zero Dawn and the desperate grief of the men and women brought in to help. Some of them had chosen death over service, and he almost doesn’t blame them. Before Aloy - before Ersa - Erend thinks he would have just laid down and died. Instead, he’d somehow pushed himself to the top of the Spire and _lived_.

He realizes he doesn’t know what happened to Elisabet in the end. He almost doesn’t want to.

Meanwhile, Elisabet’s heir takes off her Focus and slips it into her pouch. “Tell me more about the house,” she says sleepily.

The house. The hearth and the home, the place of light and life where he takes the things he loves most in this world and keeps them safe. “The house…” He sinks his fingers into her hair, feeling the warmth of her scalp. “It looks like yours.”

Something like Rost’s, before the violence of the elements wore it down: solid wood and heavy stone carefully put together with skill and love. Erend isn’t a carpenter and he isn’t a builder, but by the forge, if he has the chance, he’ll put his back into making it come true.

Except maybe the house isn’t a house. Like that night in Free Heap when he realized that they might have been married long before they made any promises, the house might be right here, him holding her as they creep through hostile territory. She wears the key to ancient doors in her blood, and no walls will keep her safe from that.

He looks down at her, tucked against his shoulder. She’s fallen asleep, silvered firelight dancing in her eyelashes.

He loves her so much he almost can’t breathe, and it makes him so very, very angry.


	84. Chapter 84

They wind their way through a valley canyon, silver granite slowly being consumed by red sandstone, and finally, _finally_ Dawn’s Sentinel looms, a beacon glowing in the mid-morning light.

He’s completely forgotten how he and Aloy look - ragged Banuk furs stained with blood and clay, days of hard travel ground into their skin - until the entire Carja garrison turns out, armed to the teeth.

“Baghar, it’s me, Erend of the Vanguard,” Erend says tiredly. “Put your spears away.”

Instantly the garrison commander’s eyes go wide, and he stumbles in his haste to wave away his men. “ _Captain!_ Stand down, stand down!” A hand is thrust forward, but the shake is weak in Erend’s grip. “What are you-?”

“We were asked by the Sun King to investigate machine activity in the Cut. We’re on our way back to Meridian.”

“The Cut?” If it’s possible, the man’s eyes go even wider.

It’s a small garrison, and there aren’t supplies to be had. Between the Nora civil war and the Daemonism, there hasn’t been a single trader along an already deserted trade route in weeks. This is an outpost in every sense of the word: it’s barely more than a gate, its single purpose to light beacons that will raise more significant forces at Daytower and beyond.

It means there’s no relief to be had. He can’t take food from these men’s mouths, and what kit he and Aloy have left will have to last.

They can hunt their own meat and they know the roads to Meridian. It _might_ be possible to make it all the way there, but there’s a dead bauble and deep shadows under Aloy’s eyes. Erend’s bad leg is close to crumpling with each step, and he’s tired as soon as he wakes up. He can’t remember the last time he had a decent night’s sleep - maybe that first night in the Embrace, before the bandits - and he really, really, _really_ needs a hot bath. He’s crawling out of his skin with the want for the safety of a fortress, and even though Free Heap is three days to the north, three days in the opposite direction of Meridian, that’s exactly where they have to go.

 

****

 

It’s not until they get to the gates of Free Heap that he _really_ understands exactly how terrible they look. The Oseram guard mutters something about filthy Banuk, making a half-hearted attempt to deny them entrance, and Aloy immediately rears back with the fury of a blazing storm. If Petra hadn’t been conveniently nearby to intercede, Erend is absolutely sure he’d have ended up fighting the entire settlement.

As it is, Petra takes one look at them and swears hard enough that everyone around her instinctively ducks. “Inside, both of you,” she directs, and then to her guards, “Open your fucking eyes. I pay you to keep out machines, not allies.”

Aloy immediately drops her pack and fishes out a bundle, thrusting it at Petra. The queen of Free Heap blinks, her face going incredulous as she tugs open the wrapping. “Seriously? You stumble up half-dead and the first thing you do is hand me Behemoth cables?”

“Payment,” Aloy says. “Need a power cell-”

“Fire and spit. The only thing you need is a good meal,” Petra interrupts, and that’s that.

There’s no point in arguing. He lets himself be taken inside Free Heap and steered toward shelter. “All that blood better not be yours,” Petra warns, whistling up a healer. “And it’s straight into the fire with that putrid meat you’re wearing.”

The communal bath house is warm with steam from the forges, its expansive barrel of a tub mercifully empty. Even though Erend’s been sweating since they stumbled down from the Grave Hoard, instinct screams against taking off his clothes. His skin pimples sharply in the open air, anticipating a freeze that never comes.

Across the room, he hears a solid thump as one of Aloy’s boots hits the floor, followed by a ragged cough. She’s quietly weeping into her hands, the other boot half-unlaced and abandoned on her foot.

“It’s hard,” she mumbles. “It’s so _hard_.”

He knows. He _knows_. He’s half a breath from losing it himself, but there are rogue subroutines and a child he hasn’t met and another boot to take off. There’s always another boot.

Erend does what he always does. He takes the hits, and then he helps with her laces.

The healer comes with potions and fresh clothes, lifting away the Banuk furs with great distaste. Erend’s gambeson is in dire need of care, the leather cracked with cold and black from flame. He can’t remember the last time he had his boots off, and he’s dismayed to find his feet are shredded, calluses and blisters layered between half-healed frostbite

No wonder it’s hurt so much to walk. It was easier to assume everything was fine than to confront the fact that maybe it wasn’t, so he’d just swallowed it back and kept moving. When the healer offers him two vials of ember, he doesn’t hesitate.

There’s warm water and as much soap as he wants, and there isn’t the possibility of a Scorcher leaping out from the bushes. Right at this moment, someone else is worrying about the world. It’s so luxurious it doesn’t feel _real_.

He shaves. It’s the first time he’s seen himself in a mirror since they left Free Heap on their way to the Cut, and he almost doesn’t recognize himself in the little square of glass in his hand. He’s buried under at least two months’ unkempt beard, his nose and cheeks peeling from windburn.

“There’s your face,” Aloy says from her side of the bath. She’s submerged past her chin, her hair floating around her like golden river moss. “I was starting to worry.”

“I look like a vagrant,” he says mournfully. “I can’t believe you married me like this.”

“Well.” She grins just above the water line. “I figured it would work out.”

It’s so nice to be _clean_. Once he’s rinsed himself, it’s suddenly impossible to get out, so he leans his head back on the edge of the tub and closes his eyes. Eventually, a trio of workers come in after a long day manning the forges, and he forces himself to relinquish his space. The workers are eager to chat - “Erend Vanguardsman! Heard you’re back from the Cut. What’s news?” - but he just can’t handle conversation right now.

There’s a room and a bed, and there’s Aloy, already passed out on the bare mattress. It’s not yet sundown, but it seems like such a good idea that he’s sound asleep even before his head hits the pillow.

 

****

 

Sometime in the deep dark, Aloy launches to her feet. “Fireclaw,” she hisses, and then her bow is in her hand and she’s out the door.

 _Fuck_. Somehow, they’ve been followed, and now all of Free Heap is in danger. Dizzy with sleep and ember, he grabs at his axe, bandaged feet hitting the floor with a sharp stab of pain.

It’s not a Fireclaw. She’s standing in the courtyard of the inn, heaving for breath like she’s half-drowned, her bowstring drawn taut at her cheek. There’s nothing except a startled watchman pacing on the wall.

“...everything okay?” the guard hesitantly calls down.

“It’s fine,” Erend says, more sharply than he intends. “Keep moving. Not your business.”

It’s a nightmare, fire and blood spun from nowhere. He’s just lucky she hadn’t accidentally punched him in the face. “I could hear it, Erend. It was right _there_.” Her free hand goes to a fist in his collar, a reflexive grasp at something solid. All he can do is palm the side of her head and bring her close to his chest.

He’s back to dreaming, too. Since the night Sylens broke his silence, it’s variations of the same theme: a heavy, unseen presence moves toward him in a slow, inexorable pursuit. Erend has a child in his arms, sometimes Itamen, sometimes his own, always bleeding, and he can’t stop, he _can’t_ , because if he does, the presence will claim them both. He wakes up drenched in sweat and dread, his throat too tight to scream.

She drinks some water and he holds her until she finally stops shaking. He wants to say soothing words, to lie and tell her it wasn’t real, but isn’t that the point of nightmares? They’re forged from the waking world, all the bad things smelted down and sharpened to a sliver-keen edge. They break open your worst fears like containers of blaze, the contents blooming out in a jumbled, terrifying flood.

He knows. He’d spent months dreaming about slick blood, and then he’d ended up curled around her at the Spire. He _knows_.

Despite the glowing brazier across the room, it feels like he can’t get warm. He left Mainspring, but parts linger. He might have survived the Spire, but he never quite came down. He’s out of the Cut, but maybe it’s the same, ice-thin web clinging no matter how far away he goes.

“I want my family,” Aloy says into his neck. “I want you. I want to love our son or daughter so hard it hurts. I want to teach her how to hold her bow and how to climb a tree and-” her voice goes clenched and damp, “I want to be _alive_ for her.”

“I want to be sober for her,” he says. “I will die before I let anyone hit her. I’m gonna make sure the only bruises she gets are from climbing things she shouldn’t.”

Aloy makes a noise of agreement, settling herself into the hollow of his shoulder.

His daughter. His son? The child in his mind is always modeled after Itamen, someone with a shock red hair and a face he can’t quite see. He can’t see it now, but he _will_.  

 _What are you going to know?_ he asks the kid he hasn’t met yet. _What are you going to see in this world, and how do we keep it out of your nightmares? How do we keep it out of ours?_

 

****

 

Maybe it’s because he’s finally somewhere that’s mostly safe, but his body ignites just before dawn. He hears Aloy get up at some point, her footsteps urgent, and then the muffled sound of her being sick in the other room. He means to go offer some comfort, maybe hold her hair back, but when he lifts his head, everything spins so badly it feels like he’s going to be thrown to the ceiling.

An indeterminate time later, he hears Petra’s voice from the doorway. He opens one eye and sees her sitting on the stoop, Aloy hunched by her side. “You’re both half-open flesh,” the queen of Free Heap is saying. “Gotta melt the rock before you separate the slag.”

Aloy mumbles something he can’t hear.

“It’s not a matter of deserving,” Petra laughs. “Girl, you’ve got the entire world slinging stone your way. Let us be a haven for a few days. My forges will go cold before I let anything smaller than a Thunderjaw past my gates.”

He sleeps. There are tonics and potions, and Aloy’s hair surrounding him like fire. Sometimes she’s sleeping, too; other times, she’s calmly splicing shards into ridgewood, future arrows laid out in a neat bundle between her calves. The last two fingers of her right hand, the ones left stiff and clenched by the Daemon’s tower, are slowly uncurling like hesitant plants, flexibility massaged into them with the passage of time. Her eyes are moss-green and calm, and she drops one hand down to sink her fingers into his hair.

Once, it felt unnatural, a stilted gesture from a woman still deeply, painfully feral. Now, it’s comforting and as familiar as his own breath, and he leans into her touch.

He never expected her. He’d seen her once, fleeting as an eyelash blown from a palm, and then she was gone and Ersa died and his life was suddenly nothing. He’d let himself be taken under dark water, and she’d grabbed him like a torch and pulled him up into the light.

His wife. His _wife_ , the hearth and the home he never thought he could have, and the child he never let himself want.

There are monsters trying to kill them and a world that won’t stay saved, but steel to his bones, Erend Vanguardsman is abjectly grateful for every moment of it.

 

****

When he finally wakes up, Erend feels like he’s been beaten and then stretched out to dry. Still, he’s awake. He’s alive. He’s clean and he’s something like safe. He’s back in the warmth of the Sundom, and he’s going to be a father.

He’s also _starving_.

Aloy’s napping nearby, and when he leans in, she mumbles, “If you touch me, I’m going to kill you.”

“Getting food. Want any?”

She presses her face deeper into the pillow. “ _Ngh_.”

He gently brushes his lips across her temple and resolves to find more ginger tea.

It’s close to midday, and Free Heap is bustling. As soon as he steps out the door, he’s hit with the sharp beat of hammer on anvil, the creaking of the water wheels, and dense, bitter coal smoke. He gets a slice of roast goose on a grainy roll, limping around until he finds Petra.

She’s casually sharpening a blade, her feet treading a steady cadence on the kickwheel as her leather apron catches the spray of sparks. “You look like shit, little ember,” she observes cheerfully. “Feeling any better?”

“Mostly, thanks.” He’s upright, lurching on two feet that are finally more scab than meat, his bad leg still a dull, persistent throb. He’s within spitting distance of his room at the inn, but he’s already bone-tired. “Glad to be here, that’s for sure.”

She nods her approval. “Good. Come sit here and talk to me. Our girl’s said a little, but fire and spit, you’ve both been in such rough shape, even _I_ couldn’t stomach my usual interrogation. Consider yourself spared. Now: you were in the Cut: what did you kids find up there?”

“I don’t know.” And that’s the worst part. He knows what he saw and he knows what he heard, but he doesn’t know what it _means_. The only thing he’s sure of is that Aloy doesn’t know either, and she needs to lay everything out like pieces of leather before she can stitch it into armor. Whatever happened in the Cut, whatever CYAN was, however the Daemon started - it got Sylens’s attention as well, and that makes Erend’s stomach twist.

He and Aloy need to get back to Meridian. They need to catch their breath and regroup, and sift through whatever it is that she’s found. Free Heap is a good haven, but Erend wants more than these battlements around him; he wants Meridian’s butte and layers of walls, its caverns and tunnels, hundreds of years of clever defense wrapped around him.

He just doesn’t know if they have _time_. Urgency bubbles up like reflux, and he sets the sandwich down. HEPHAESTUS might be staring through machine eyes from here to Meridian, waiting to strike, and there’s no way to know. The Cut had claimed one bauble, and there’s no way to know if that was an accident or just HEPHAESTUS’s first taste of blood.

If he and Aloy are fast, it’s still twelve days on the road, Ravagers and Glinthawks and Thunderjaws prowling the whole way, and he really, really doesn’t feel fast.

Petra’s still looking at him expectantly. “Followed an ant trail,” Erend says finally. “Stomped the shit out of the hill.”

“Are there more ants?”

“Yeah.”

“And now they’re pissed.”

“Yeah.” His throat closes up, the shower of sparks in her lap going hot and blurred. “I just...”

He can’t tell her. It’s not his to tell, but somehow, Petra knows anyway. “World’s on fire, and you kids are working on something a little closer to home.”

He blinks. “How...?”

“Just because I didn’t squeeze one out doesn’t mean I don’t know anything.” She snorts. “No, idiot. She told me.”

All the breath goes out of him in a punch, and he puts his elbows on his knees, exhaling slowly through his hands. His eyes prick with exhausted tears, but he is _not_ going to blubber here at Petra. She isn’t that sort of confidante. Her priorities start and end at Free Heap’s gates, and that’s what everything else is measured against.

She’s watching him steadily. “This is good news, right?”

“It’s good, it’s _so_ good, we just- we’re tired. That’s all.” He rubs at his face. His wife. His _child_.

“Ants coming from the north?”

He shakes his head. "Don't know."

Petra puts a foot down, slowing the kickwheel beneath her boot. She sets the blade aside and leans toward him. “She has an army, Erend, and she’s made you her general. We owe her for what she’s done, and shards, I like her. I like _both_ of you.” Her eyes soften. “You two deserve a moment of quiet, and there’s more than one soul in this blistering land that will gladly be a bulwark.”

He nods, pressing his fingers into his eyes.

“If you were anyone else, I’d give you a bottle and sit here until it was empty,” she says. “Since I won’t, I’m just going to say: tell me what I need to know. Tell me what I need to do. Tell me where to send my people, and they’ll go.”

“I don’t-”

“Not right _now_ ” she says, exasperated. “Right now is when you rest up. Get.”

As he’s hobbling away, Erend turns back. “She married me.”

“Of course she did. She’s not stupid.” Petra hums. “That doesn’t mean I can’t still steal her away.  It just means the competition got a little more fierce.”

He shakes his head. “Don’t ever change.”

The queen of Free Heap winks. “Never.”

 

****

 

He dreams.

The location is indistinct; every time he tries to concentrate on identifying features or landmarks, they slide away. The only thing solid is Ourea, standing a few paces off his shoulder. The blue cables twine through her skin like a pacified machine, pulsing and calm.

She’s dead, but that doesn’t bother him. “You weren’t wrong,” she says.

“Oh?”

“You called them ants.”

“It was just a thing.”

“The machines aren’t our enemy. They do what they do. We eat and breath and shit. So do they, in their own way.”

“I know.” He’s surprised by the admission, but then equally surprised to realize he believes it. HEPHAESTUS isn’t an enemy either, any more than Erend's axe is an enemy to the things it hits. The subroutine is a tool, and the larger issue is that is has no wielder.

“All of us carry some of the truth,” Ourea says. “If we took all of mankind and put what we know into a single song, _oh_ , we'd know so much.”

He thinks of Eleuthia and its empty halls, a room of blank Focuses like a glistening fruit swollen with sterile seeds. The absence of APOLLO feels like water in his lungs, and when he turns back, Ourea’s face becomes Ersa’s.

“What do I always say?” she demands, and then fondly cuffs the side of his head. “Knowledge is your sharpest weapon, idiot.”

She starts drifting away into the indeterminate distance, and when he goes to follow her, he finds he can’t lift his legs. Walking feels like moving against a brutal current, and he doesn’t have a hope of catching up.

He opens his eyes to a dark room, the last embers glowing faintly in the brazier. The desert air is turning crisp, a breeze carrying the scent of burning coal through the open window.

Aloy is sound asleep, one hand tangled in her hair. He rolls against her and presses his lips to her shoulder, breathing in the her comforting scent.  

What kind of world are they making for this kid? Everything should unfold like a map, but instead, there are shadows and threats. He thinks about Itamen, conceived as a desperate attempt to secure a dynasty. His own baby, an unintended recipient of this fucked-up world, carrying the heavy significance of both its parents’ blood...

We are our own men, Avad said. Erend wants to make sure their children will be their own, too.


	85. Chapter 85

There’s the issue of the bauble, and even before Aloy asks, Petra offers two unbroken power cells. “My people have built three of these ‘baubles’ and I like how they work,” she says. “Take whatever you need from us. Between those plans and the Behemoth cables you brought me, I consider it a fair trade. There hasn’t been a Stormbird or Snapmaw within a thousand paces of my pile of dirt, and you know I don’t like to be in debt.”

Aloy gratefully inspects the power cells, lifting each one to slowly rotate it against the glare of the sun. The housings are barely even scratched. She nods. “Thank you.”

It’s a far cry from that day in the Sun Palace when she’d snapped at Avad like a caged fox.

He becomes a messenger, a scavenger for other parts. The bauble he made in the Cut is functional, but rough, and by mutual agreement, it becomes a donor. It’s not even a let-down; he’d built it because they needed to get out of the Cut, and now that they’re out, he’s okay with it being scavenged for better-built siblings. At least now, he knows what parts need to be gathered and exactly how they’re being used.

He’s twisting a loop of stray wire into an organized bundle when Aloy looks up. “Do we have any Glinthawk feathers? I thought I saw some somewhere in here.”

The room at the inn has a bed and a small table, with a washroom tucked around a high partition. She’s claimed the table, two lanterns turned up high and precariously balanced as they provide the brightness she needs for the more delicate construction. Machine parts gather at the edge of the table, spilling over to the floor around it. He reaches for the nearby pile of feathers, shuffling them in his hands. “Yeah, but only four of these are any good. How many do we need?”

She pushes her borrowed goggles up on her forehead, running a hand over hair tucked back in a thick, practical bundle, and blows away a small cloud of sparker smoke. “Fifteen at least. Twenty if you can find them. I want to have a bauble fully charged at all times.”

He wrangles feathers. He gets an armful from the parts trader in Free Heap’s small market, and another few from a local sparkworker. “These are pretty small,” Erend says, stacking them at her elbow. “Too small?”

Aloy eyes them. “Small might be better. I think it’ll make the panel more foldable. Will you hand me that section of plate?”

It takes the better part of three days, but the first bauble hums easily to life. “Look,” she says, gesturing to his Focus, and for the first time, he sees the bauble’s glowing controls, a dense, spherical web hanging in empty air.

He’s acutely aware of how much of her work relies on her Focus. He’s acutely aware of how much of _everything_ relies on her Focus. If Aloy hadn’t found it by accident, if she hadn’t fallen into that little cave, if she hadn’t pushed through the crowd to find Olin, HADES couldn’t have been stopped and the entire world would be scrubbed clean.

It scares him that so much rides on cold, simple luck.

Maybe Olin would have seen her anyway, and maybe his Focus would have recognized her face even across an anonymous crowd. She doesn’t talk about the massacre at the Proving, but in the pit of his stomach, Erend knows the Eclipse wouldn’t have done anything different. They’d have scorched the earth until they found her, and even though Aloy is so very, very clever, she would have been without the one weapon she uses most.

Maybe she’d have found one anyway. Maybe Sylens would have plucked her from obscurity. Maybe-

He can’t think like that. He has to be here in this moment, his own Focus turning the room to a grid of blue and white as his wife stands there with the bauble at her feet and the controls floating in her hands.

His _wife_ , a glowing beacon brighter than anything projected from the Metal World.

“One down,” she says, blithely ignorant of the way his heart is suddenly pounding in his chest. “Hand me that cup of fuses, will you?”

 

****

 

The second bauble is easier. Aloy leans intently over her pile of machine parts, and Erend takes the power cells up to the roof to charge in the sun. He spreads the Glinthawk-feather array around them like petals of a strange, metallic flower, and sits nearby, rubbing oil into his gambeson.

It’s a little under two weeks to Meridian. He counts it off on his fingers, squinting as if he could possibly see the Spire glinting in the distance. It’s too far, and even if it weren’t, the high buttes of the Gatelands press against the horizon, dusted with snow like sugar powder on a cake.

He wants to be home. He wants his own house with his own thick, wooden door that he can bar against the rest of the world. He wants to curl up in his own bed with his wife and their kid and pretend that everything will always be fine.

Down below, Free Heap bustles. Coal smoke rises, twisting in the crisp fall air, and the hammers fall against their anvils with a familiar, comforting clang. Days like this, he almost misses the Claim.

A child darts under a loaded derrick, followed by a harried man who looks like he’s probably her father. Immediately, Petra’s voice bellows out, “Kaeluf!”

“Sorry, Beladga’s supposed to be watching her-”

“I don’t care _who_. I’ve got half a ton of steel hanging here and I don’t need a crushed kid if it goes.”

The girl is scooped up and hauled to safety, giggling the whole time.

 _That’s us_ , Erend thinks, and looks down at the power cells, glowing as they drink from the sun. He knows how to take a hit, and he’s squaring up, nervous but firm. _You and me, kid. I got this. Anything that goes after you goes through me first, and they’ll never get anywhere close._

 

****

 

The baubles are completed. Power cells are charged. Supplies are replenished and bags are packed. Before they leave, Aloy makes a point to look at the baubles stationed around Free Heap, and after detailed scrutiny, declares them serviceable. “Keep an eye on these connections,” she says, pointing to a tiny blob of solder. “They might rust when it rains.”

“Don’t tell me how to manage my metal,” Petra retorts, and adds slyly, “Are you sure I can’t convince you to stay? I mean. For purely economic reasons.”

“You haven’t seen the last of us,” Aloy promises.

“Yeah, yeah.” The queen of Free Heap waves her hands, shooing them out the gates. “That’s what they all say.” She winks at Erend. “Take care of each other, and as I’m sure you already know, _Petra_ is an excellent name for a baby.”

Free Heap is far too much like the Claim for him to ever call it home, but sometimes, he feels like he could come close.

****

 

Beyond the influence of Free Heap’s baubles, a herd of Striders pick their way through the scrub. Aloy pacifies two, strapping the active bauble to her pack. Erend takes the secondary bauble and secures it behind his Strider’s blaze canister, Glinthawk feathers spread out like a fan.

They make camp that night tucked against a blocky, rusted Ancient hulk, and Erend settles himself in to keep watch, the Striders nudging at the ground nearby with calm, blue lenses. Across the river, a Snapmaw growls at a passing Carja convoy, growing bored as the alarmed merchants hurry away.

Aloy’s sitting by the fire, cross-legged with her elbows on her knees, turning her Focus over and over in bare fingers. “I thought I could deactivate the antenna,” she finally says. “I thought I could- maybe if I couldn’t communicate, if I could only see- but it doesn’t work like that, Erend, and I _can’t-_ "

He reaches over to snare one of her hands in his own. “Don’t ruin it,” he says quietly. “Please.”

“Sylens was Banuk,” she says.

“Was?”

“Ourea said he was a shaman, and that a lot of sacred objects went missing when he did.”

It figures. Erend knows enough about the Banuk to know that whatever Sylens took was probably powerful, irreplaceable, and very much functional. “What’s he doing with them?”

“He found HADES and gave it a cult, and when it decided he wasn't useful anymore, he threw me at it.” She shakes her head. “We have to get to HEPHAESTUS before he does, and I know he knows more than we do.”

“If he gets to HEPHAESTUS first, that’s good, right? If he’s more adept-”

“I don’t know. He just asks questions and never gives any answers.” Her shoulders slump, and she scrubs at her face with a palm. “Best-case scenario? He purges the subroutine and brings it back to zero. The Derangement stops, and if he can direct HEPHAESTUS the way he directed HADES, he might be able to rebuild GAIA.”

“That’s our goal, then.”

“Without GAIA, everything always goes back to chaos.” She sighs. “He’ll only purge HEPHAESTUS if doing so aligns with his own fucking interests.”

Erend doesn’t have to ask what happens if Sylens has other plans. The Derangement is a spinning gear, wobbling further and faster away from true, and sooner or later, it will splinter apart.  

When he saw his first Sawtooth, he’d never seen anything so terrifying; now, he’s got scars from five different Fireclaws, and he’s lost his capacity to be afraid that way. He’s accepted that there will always be something bigger and meaner lurking in the future, and all he can do is brace himself for the day he has to put himself between it and his family.

His wife. Their kid. His _family._ No matter how badly he wants it, there isn’t a little homestead anywhere, not when the world is the way it is, not when Aloy is who she is. His fantasies are irrelevant. She's tied to the fate of the world and he's tied to her, and there's no escape for either of them.

“Erend,” she says quietly, and when he looks over, she’s resting one hand on her belly, her Focus glinting between her finger as she stares into the fire with heavy sadness. “This baby - what if there’s enough of Elisabet in them to open those doors?”

 _Doors open for me. They think I'm her._ If Sylens can’t get what he wants from Aloy, he might reach out for the next closest thing.

“I won’t let that happen,” Erend says, and he’s surprised at how cold and calm he feels. Sylens will die before he gets within a hundred miles of their kid, and that is a simple fact.

Aloy makes a small noncommittal noise, too lost in anxiety to argue, and puts her Focus back at her temple. She flicks through it for awhile before finally falling asleep.

Across the river, one of the Snapmaws shakes its massive head. Erend leans back against the rusted hulk and watches the stars slide across the sky. There are Fireclaws and the Derangement, and then there’s Sylens. New threats fold into each other, steel into steel, and in his bones he’s still desperately hacking away at the poison vines of his father’s bloodline.

He isn’t prepared to be a father. He’ll never be prepared, and he’s drowning in an emotion too big to be fear and too fierce to be excitement.

 

****

 

The journey is mostly quiet. He can’t tell if it’s because of the baubles’ protective shell or if the road is just mercifully clear, but they make good time. The mountains loom in the distance, Daytower’s watch forming its own peak amid the tall crags.  

The rocking gait of the Striders is brutal for Aloy’s nausea, and she spends most of the time with her head down on the machine’s thick neck, ill-tempered and green. Erend wants to say they can stop to rest, but distance is distance, and they don’t really have a choice.

She ferrets out questions and bludgeons them into submission, but pregnancy isn’t something exact. She and Erend had taken an afternoon looking for answers in Free Heap, two wholly unprepared people stammering out nervous questions to a wizened, bemused midwife, and gotten the same answer over and over: everything in its own time.

“Well, that wasn’t entirely useless,” Aloy had allowed as they’d walked back to the inn. “Now we know.”

His voice had cracked to an octave it hadn’t hit since puberty. “ _Do_ we?”

Now that he’s had some time to digest the information, Erend doesn’t feel like he’s spinning too far out of control. He knows how to take a hit, and even if this isn’t something he can train for, he’s got a much clearer idea of what to expect.

A baby. They’re having a baby. She married him and they’re having a _baby_.

So, he takes point and watches for danger, pulling ginger root from the shallow riverbank when he finds some. He brews tea and coaxes her into a bit of soup, and spends his nights staring up at the stars and listening to the steady cadence of her heartbeat.

It isn’t fair how much she has to shoulder, and, being Aloy, of course she chooses to shoulder it all. She’d spent so many months racing after HADES while he’d been drunk off his ass back in Meridian, and then she’d pushed herself to exhaustion in the Cut chasing after HEPHAESTUS. Nature decreed that she’s the one to carry this baby, so she’s doing what she always does: grit her teeth and dig in her heels, muscling through with a determined snarl. Erend does what he always does, setting himself firmly at her back with his axe and hands and heart at the ready.

Fire and spit, he loves her. There’s still a tiny bit of blue clay ground into his left eyebrow, and he’s doing everything he can to keep it there.

 

****

The road follows the river, gradually getting wider as the cliffs get higher and more steep. Erend and Aloy skirt a herd of Tramplers in one of the narrow valleys, eventually meeting up with the main highway from Daytower to Meridian just as it crests at Morning’s Watch.

Meridian is still a week away, but the highway leads right to the northern gate, and having the well-worn cobbles beneath his feet feels like the first tangible evidence that they’re actually going home.

There are decisions to be made, and Aloy regretfully looses the Striders to wander away through the canyon. Walking is slower, but a human on a machine is a heart-stopping spectacle to fellow travelers, and there’s too much traffic to go unnoticed.

“I don’t want to deal with it,” Aloy mutters. “I don’t care. I just don’t want anyone staring.”

Erend understands completely. After the unkind scrutiny of the Cut, it’s a painfully-welcome relief to be unremarkable. They’re not anonymous, not by any account, but the acknowledgements are nods and brief greetings, nothing unexpected for the captain of the Vanguard and the red-haired hero from the Spire.

Eventually, the Spire itself coalesces in the distance, pale and indistinct as the wispy clouds overhead. Meridian is three days away, and the Gatelands glow orange with autumn sun. In the mornings, Erend’s breath clouds in the chilly air. It’ll be the dry season when they get home; he wants stifling heat, the hearty buzz of insects and the ever-present tang of overripe fruit, but they’ve been gone too long.

It’s probably for the best. He’s still picking flakes of healing windburn from his nose and carefully airing out his feet at night. He’s a soldier, and he knows humidity is the last thing he needs right now, but that doesn’t stop him from longing for the summer sauna.

When they stop midday, Aloy abruptly wolfs down her meal. “I am _starving_ ,” she says, looking just as surprised as he is. “ _Finally_.”

“Good,” he agrees, his heart leaping into his throat. “Really good.”

It seems to hold. “This is perfect timing,” she says as they bed down for the night. “I really didn’t want to walk across the bridge and then puke as soon as I got to the gate.” Her lips twist with unease. “Erend, I don’t want to tell anyone yet. I mean, it’ll be obvious eventually, but I just…”

“Yeah,” he says. It looms in his head, and even as he’s repeating it to himself like a precious mantra - _we’re having a baby, we’re having a baby_ \- the words feel too big in his mouth. She's starting to show - just barely, just enough that she's wearing her supply belt slung a lower on her hips - and she's brittle and bitterly self-conscious. He’s trying not to look, but he can’t _not_ , because it’s brilliant, terrifying evidence that this is actually happening.

He’s going to be a father. Him, Erend of the Vanguard.

It comes to a head the next day. They’re take a break to soak in the river, attempting to escape the heavy afternoon sun, and suddenly he gets a sharp palmful of water in his face with a snarl. “Don’t. Fucking. _Stare!_ ”

“I'm not!”

“You were!”

“Haven't I already seen you?”

“Not like-” she crosses her arms across her belly- “ _this_.”

“You're _beautiful_ ,” he sputters, and even though it's an understatement, it's apparently also the wrong thing to say because he gets another splash in the face. “ _Ack_ \- what do you want me to say?”

She growls and turns away, and he’s offended enough that they spend the rest of the afternoon in resentful silence.

It’s not until they’re camped for the night that realization comes like a stone to his head: her body is changing in obvious and meaningful ways, and she's irritable because she’s heartsick and afraid. Being a mother is the basis for Nora culture, and Aloy has been very clearly told she isn’t a Nora. Despite everything, despite the arrow in his shoulder and the filth spewed from Lansra’s mouth, Erend _knows_ some tender part of her still aches to be accepted by her tribe. He knows Aloy still nurses a kernel of hope that if she meets some nebulous standard, if she’s somehow _good enough_ , she’ll be let in. If she isn’t, if she isn’t good enough to be a Nora, she isn’t good enough to be a mother.

Same poison roots, same old howl. He’s not his father, but he _might_ be, and for every moment he’s certain of himself, there’s another moment he’s sick with doubt.

Aloy single-handedly took down the Eclipse, thwarted HADES with Erend at her back, and then took over the entire Cut because she wanted to climb a fucking mountain. She knocked off the belly plate of a Sawtooth for him to cleave its innards in half, and dragged him out of himself and into her light. He can do anything when he’s by her side, but fire and spit, there have never been two people more unprepared to raise a child.

“Hey,” he says quietly, rolling over. “I’m sorry.”

Guilt flickers across her face like the firelight dancing in the shadows in her hair. “No, I’m the one who should be sorry.”

The first time she touched him, he’d been in Pitchcliff, paralyzed with grief; she’d taken a fist of his hair and gripped a little too hard, grounding him with the pain. “Look,” he says, pressing his forehead against hers. “Worst-case scenario for this kid is that they'll turn out like us.”

“That's a terrible thing to say,” she says.

“We’ve done okay with what we’ve got. We’ve _made_ it okay.” Erend has no control. No one does. This kid might hate them from day one, and Erend will shatter into a thousand pieces. It doesn’t matter. He can’t control the Derangement, and he can’t control a person who isn’t even born. “We do the best we can.”

She sucks her teeth, but he knows he has her. “I’m going to stab anyone who says otherwise.”

“I’ll hold them down,” he promises.

He’s almost asleep when she suddenly curls against him, tugging one hand to rest on her belly. “I’m excited,” she says in a tone of voice normally reserved for dire warnings.

She’s so fierce even when she’s being soft, and it’s so perfect, all he can do is close his eyes and hum into the wild tangle of her hair.


	86. Chapter 86

When the canyonland starts to give way to waxy leaves, it feels like each breath brings more air into Erend’s lungs. It’s well into the dry season, the grass curled and crisp at the edge of the road, but it doesn’t matter: after four long months, the towers of Meridian rise resplendent from the haze, and it’s a shuddery relief that feels like a huge swallow of bright, cool water.

Every time he sees Meridian, it blows him away. It’s more beautiful than he remembers and more beloved than feels possible.

When he’d been fighting for Avad, he’d been half-starved and drunk on battle lust and early-morning ale. Meridian split the clouds like a fever-dream, and it suddenly seemed impossible that anything that huge could fall, but it _had_ , and the day he’d walked through the gates to flower petals and grateful cheers felt like the best day of his life.

He’s come and gone a hundred times since then, and every time, Meridian is perfect and unchanged. It’s an imposing fortress, a proud city, and it’s his home, beautiful and solid. He knows its battlements and alleyways and the intimate corners of his own apartment. It’s everything the Claim wasn't, and he loves it all the more for that. When it had been shattered by the Eclipse, it felt like a physical blow.

Now, he’s returning with his wife. He reaches for Aloy’s hand and finds her fingers already searching for his. “Home,” she says, and he’s so overwhelmed he just swallows, his eyes gone hot and prickly.

They could push through the last few miles to the gate, but it’s almost dark and they’re staggering with exhaustion. There are a string of camps along this stretch of the road, so they pick one and settle in for the night. Aloy pulls one of the traders aside to make some transactions, and Erend finds a handful Carja soldiers and asks for news.

There’s nothing unusual to report. Two of the soldiers are being transferred to Daytower, both painfully young and _thrilled_ to be assigned outside of Meridian. Erend checks them over and gives them as much a stern briefing as he can; they’re not under his command, but they’re barely old enough to shave and he can’t help himself. They offer him some of their ale, and he’s tired enough that even acknowledging the temptation feels like too much effort. He waves it off, wishes them luck, and takes himself to bed.

He finds Aloy sitting cross-legged on the bedroll, a handful of small materials carefully arranged at her feet. Just as he walks up, she reaches up to snag his hand. “Here. Give me your wrist.”

When Erend looks down, it’s a string of water-blue beads, bound together with knotted sky-blue cord. There’s something about the cord that glows in the firelight, the faintest glimmer of red, and he realizes she’s twisted strands of her hair alongside the fiber.

“I mean, if you like it,” she says, the words coming out in a rush. “I couldn’t find the right beads in the Cut, and I’ve been asking every trader-”

“It’s...nice,” he says, which is an understatement. It’s _beautiful_. It’s simple and she’s made it just now while he was inspecting the ranks, but there’s a sturdiness about it. “It’s really, really nice.”

She gently turns it, hiding the knot against the underside of his wrist. “This is- any Nora is going to know what this means.”

“What’s it mean?” His heart is suddenly pounding in the meat of his tongue.

“Rost wore his until he died,” she says. “I- I don’t know anything about Nora ceremony, but I know this part.”

The other tribes scoff at the Carja for their bright silks, but the Nora outweigh them in sheer number of accessories. Even children wear little trinkets, and Nora matriarchs stand tall beneath a heavy load of bangles and beads. For the first time, he wonders if each woven rope and piece of ornamentation represents a member of their family.

Aloy has only Rost’s bone pendant and the embroidered pouch for her Focus, and now she’s tied a piece of herself to Erend’s wrist. Between them, it’s a meager collection, but it’s everything they have.

Her eyes flick across his face. “I don’t want you to walk into Meridian having any doubt.”

He takes her face in his hands and kisses her. “I’m gonna wear it forever,” he says fervently. “I’m going to show it off, and I’m cutting off all my sleeves-”

Fire and spit, she’s _blushing_ , and they’re both so tired, but they’re almost home and they’re married and they’re having a baby. This is his family, decorated and claimed, and it’s so much more than he’s ever let himself want.

 

****

 

He and Aloy are still wearing the simple Oseram travelling leathers from Free Heap, and Erend’s ragged gambeson is jury-rigged with wire and bits of scrap. She has her hair bound back in a tight plait in an attempt to avoid the dust, but somehow, they’re both still recognizable enough that as soon as they approach the northern gate, the bellow of a horn rings out, a familiar Vanguard alert.

It’s Beggerd’s watch, with Ullar and Gadger backing him up. The Pitchcliff kid’s finally growing into his broad frame, and when he flips back his faceplate, Erend sees the start of a thick, mature beard.

“Look at you,” Erend says. “I leave and everyone gets scruffy. What gives?”

The kid, bless him, looks like he isn’t sure whether to laugh or be terrified.

“Speak for yourself, Captain,” Beggerd says, coming to clap a heavy hand on Erend’s shoulder. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

“Sore everything. You have no idea how good it is to see this place.”

Ullar peels off to walk them into the city. “I’ll get word around,” the Vanguardsman says. “I imagine you want a rest.”

“Haven’t slept in our own bed in months,” Erend says. “I hope the house is still there.” He nods down the street. “I’ll be at the command post in the morning.”

“Glad to see you home, Cap.”

“Glad to be here.”

The door creaks open on disused hinges. There’s dust on everything, and when Erend blows into the lamp to kindle the flame, the motes dance up in the light. It’s a warm supplement to the afternoon sun, low enough on the horizon that the shadows take almost the entire room.

Once, Erend cajoled Aloy into this space like a man trying to touch something dangerous and feral. She’d grudgingly curled up by the fireplace and been gone in the morning, leaving like sleep blinked from his eyes. Now, she drops her pack near the couch with a thump, sitting down to unlace her boots. She’s no longer a wary stranger; she’s his wife, cranky and tired, and his throat swells shut with gratitude.

 

****

 

It was one thing to bathe at Free Heap, but this is his own water in his own apartment. The taps cough from disuse, but what comes out is clear and cool, and he puts a wet cloth to his face and lets himself just breathe.

For the hell of it, he shaves, lathering up with the thick cream that carries just a hint of sweet valley’s blush. There’s a pink line of scorch down one cheek, bisecting his muttonchops and destroying any hope of future hair. “Well,” he says. “Makes me look rakish, don’t you think?”

Aloy looks up from beneath towel-damp hair. “Dashing,” she agrees, but there’s a tight anxiety around her eyes, and more than a few new scars carved across her own skin.

He knows. He’s been dreaming of inescapable fire too, and not the kind that lives in her hair.

But they’re home. They’re _home_. There aren’t any Fireclaws or Scorchers, no bitter wind or miserable snow. It’s just familiar stone and wood, familiar pillows and blankets, and when she pulls him into bed, he falls into the familiar warmth of her body.

“I, um-” he swallows against a sudden flare of panic- “I don’t want to hurt you-”

“Erend Vanguardsman, don’t you dare stop,” she says fiercely, rocking up against him, and that’s all he needs to hear.

 

****

 

When he wakes up, it feels clean and right. He’s where he should be, Aloy comfortably sprawled next to him. The morning air is cool but not cold, and when his feet hit the floor, the hewn stone is hard and familiar. She reaches out to snag his arm. “Got to report in,” he says, leaning in to kiss the space behind her ear. “They probably think we’re dead.”

“Could be dead for another hour,” she mumbles.

He’s sore and still very, very tired, but not so much that he can’t shake the dust from his uniform and don it. His gambeson looks terrible and it looks even worse compared to the crisp orange and white of his tunic, but if broken arrows are worn as a badge of pride, he’s going to walk into the barracks showing off the whole damn battle. His bad leg seized up in his sleep; travel hasn't been kind to his body, but he’s got things to do, so he limps through the early-morning streets on pins and needles.

These are his streets. These are his walls and his alleys, and the sun that’s coming up sharp and gold gilds his rooftops and his ridiculous, pretty little kites.

“There you are,” Tandin says when he gets to the barracks, a rush of relief flooding his voice. “Beggerd said you’d come in. It’s been too long, Cap.” There’s a gruff, welcome embrace that Erend holds a beat longer than he should.

He’s _missed_ this. He’s missed his men and his city, and he thought he knew how much until right now, but it’s hitting him hammer on anvil and all he wants to do is gather it all up in his arms - all of it, men and city and Aloy - and never let go.

“No kidding,” Erend says. Tandin. _Tandin_. He loves his men, all of them, and now he’s back, and it’s so good it feels like a heavy weight somewhere deep in his chest. “Doesn’t look like the place fell apart in my absence. Good job.”

“Well, you know.” Tandin shrugs. “Dad’s home. Time to clean up and pretend nothing happened.”

It’s casually said and it means nothing, but it still hits Erend so hard he almost blurts out _I’m going to be a dad._ His own dad had always known what went on, and hiding never ended well. Erend will make it better - he _is_ making it better - and somehow, he manages to keep a casual tone. “Wait until I check the closets.”

“Cap!” Kip chirps, all but dancing across the practice ground. “We were starting to place bets on whether or not you’d died.”

“We _weren’t_.” Tandin shoots him a sour look, before allowing, “Not yet, anyway.”

Erend snorts. “I expected nothing less.”

Adar comes up and grasps his hand with a warmth Erend never thought he’d see. “The Vanguard has its captain back,” his second says. “Welcome.”

There’s news to share. Kagan’s wife had a baby. (A baby. _Erend’s_ wife - his _wife_ \- is having a baby.) Oddur broke his leg tripping on patrol and is out for a month; there’s rampant speculation on whether the injury was intentional. Kip's shacked up with the man who made his golden hand and so happy he's practically drunk, and there’s no shortage of ribald jokes. Another three freebooters are being evaluated for membership. The Carja with the city garrison are either being cooperative allies or insolent bungs depending on who’s doing the talking, and there are the usual bar fights and market brawls that have been broken up.

It’s all so...normal. Time beats a steady hammer, but it feels like nothing’s changed and Erend suddenly feels out of place. He’s seen strange machines. He’s lived through horrors. He married Aloy and there’s a child he already loves so much it hurts.

The Cut takes the familiar and slices the connection. The Erend that left isn’t the one standing here, and he feels flat-footed and odd. “Good,” he hears himself say. “It’s all good.”

There are patrols to walk and training to oversee. The new recruits are all women, hardy former hunters who found the Claim too oppressive. They’re the first women to be Vanguard for a very long time, and all the more welcome. Ersa’s freebooters had gathered more than a few women into its ranks, but somewhere along the way, they hadn’t stayed. Out of the hundred and twenty soldiers under Ersa’s command, ninety had survived the civil war, and little more than half chose to remain in Meridian as the newly-declared Vanguard. Nalga, Treg and Agatha died defending Ersa, and Erend doesn’t know where Elan or Kel ended up.

(A handful of Vanguard left when Erend became captain. He hadn’t found that out until much, much later.)

“We aren’t mercenaries,” he tells the recruits. “We’re the first line between the Sun King and the rest of world. If you can’t hold that line, walk away.”

“Avad got my dad out of the Sun Ring. I owe him.” The one named Kaya crosses her arms, looking him over. “Besides, my cousin Olin said you needed the muscle. He wasn’t kidding.”

Erend thinks she’s going to fit in just fine.

He lets Tandin and Eddic walk him through the ledgers, watching as the writing gets stronger and more confident with each page. “The quartermaster’s assistant’s been shorting us on freeze rime for years,” Eddic says, grinning. “We finally caught him.”

Even the mention of freeze rime brings a frisson of nausea. “Good work. Keep at it.”

Eddic wilts a little. “‘Good work’? ‘Keep at it’?”

“Well, yeah.” Erend crosses his arms. “I’m the captain. My job is to keep the peace between us and the quartermaster. I have to tell you to keep it honest and aboveboard. I _can’t_ tell you to take his bung of an assistant for all he’s worth. ”

“It _would_ be uncaptainly,” Eddic allows, and then nods in satisfaction. “We’ll...keep at it.”

These are men. He’s so proud of them.

Erend and Tandin are walking away when Tandin leans in. “You’ve got Aloy’s fancy jewel,” he says, nodding at the Focus. “Anything we should know, Cap?”

“What, I can’t be fancy all on my own?” When all he gets is a frown, he sighs. “It’s a tool. It helps her see things about machines. She got me one because we needed it.”

The Vanguardsman narrows his eyes, because he’s always been too damn perceptive. “You okay?”

He isn’t. It’s good to be home and good to be back among his people, his Vanguard, and it’s so good to know that there are three layers of stone battlements between Aloy and the rest of the world. It’s good, but something of the Cut is still frozen to his boots, some bit of frost he can’t scrape off. He can’t help but think how a single Scorcher in Meridian’s market could ignite half the city, how a Fireclaw could turn the northern bridge to molten slag with a single swipe. He’s been jumping at shadows for weeks, and the soothing familiarity of woodsmoke is tangled with the wild urge to dive for cover.

He knows he’s tired, but it goes deeper than that. He knows exactly how justified fear grows claws to sink into his bones: once, he was a big kid with an angry father and this is the same, the hot powerlessness in the face of a world that’s cruel in its indifference. He has to set his jaw and remind himself that he’s brute strength and solid muscle. He has the faith of his Vanguard and the trust of the Sun King, and the love of the woman who is the single-most powerful individual in existence. He has a kid of his own. “Hell of a road home.”

“You didn’t come back bleeding this time.”

“Had to shake it up,” Erend says. “You know, do something different, try something new.”

Tandin considers. “I _guess_.”

There’s the issue of his gambeson, so he drops it off at the Vanguard leatherworker. “Five days, minimum,” she announces, wrinkling her nose. “And it won’t be less than a thousand shards.”

“Take it up with the bursar,” Erend says.

There are a hundred things to attend to. Nothing’s urgent, but it’s still eager, a command celebrating the return of its captain. His trust hasn’t been misplaced; Adar and Tandin have kept everything under control, a well-built water wheel running steady and solid.

 _Look at them_ , he thinks to Ersa.

 _You trained them for this_ , she retorts. _Take a bit of credit._

Erend’s deep in discussion about potential armor upgrades when a runner comes from the palace.

“Marad?” Tandin asks.

He figured that was the next step. “Is anything on fire?”

“No more than usual.”

“Good.”

Kip suddenly reaches out to grab his elbow. “Cap? It’s good to have you back. Really good.”

They wouldn’t have known if he died. They’d have looked to the horizon until hope ran out, and even then, there’d be no closure.

Oddly, he thinks about his father. Maybe he’s still alive. Maybe he isn’t. It’s a strange, nebulous presence from the north, but it's a heavy question that doesn’t want an answer. Erend’s freedom doesn’t rest on the death of a miserable drunk in a muddy street. He’ll always be his father’s son, always fighting the whisper in his blood. Regardless of the answer, Erend isn’t free, but he is. His father’s life or death doesn’t determine Erend’s shackles. He does that for himself.

He has a kid. An impossible woman held out her hands and married him, and he’s going to be a father himself.

“Yeah,” Erend says, his throat going tight. “We’re really glad to be back.”


	87. Chapter 87

Erend is a soldier, and he knows better than to keep his king waiting. Aloy meets him at the foot of the bridge to the palace, arms crossed with an endearingly sour expression.

“Look,” he says. “We have resources here. We need all the help we can get.”

“I _know_ ”

It’s well into the dry season, so most Carja wrap themselves in light caftans, thin scarves pulled up to ward off the occasional dust storm blowing in off the Gatelands. She’s still got her supply belt - because of course she does, she’s Aloy - but she’s arranged the garment so that her belly isn’t immediately obvious. “You okay?” he asks, because she’s radiating the same nervous, defensive anger, daring the world to comment and terrified that it will.

She opens her mouth for a smart remark, but decides against it. “Let’s go.”

They’re barely into the palace when there’s a frantic patter of leather sandals on old stone, and Itamen suddenly skids around a corner. “ _Erend!”_

“Don’t run,” Nasadi says mildly, gliding along behind with her hands tucked into her sleeves. Itamen obediently pulls up short.

“You’re back,” Itamen says, and Erend’s heart constricts. It feels like the kid’s grown about six inches, a raw collection of knobby elbows and knees with scabs in all the right places. “You were gone _so long_.”

“Got busy,” Erend says.

“You didn’t even say goodbye.”

He hadn’t. In the mad rush to follow Aloy, he hadn’t had time to do anything more than throw together whatever kit could be mustered. “I’m really, really sorry.”

Itamen squirms for a moment, and then gives Aloy a sidelong glance. “Hi, Aloy.”

“Hi,” she says. “Where’s Avad?”

“Nowhere.” Nasadi gives her son a reproachful nudge, and Itamen sighs heavily. “Everyone always wants to see him.”

“Someday, they’ll all want to see you,” Erend points out. “You’ll never have a minute of free time ever again.” Itamen eyes him skeptically. “Steel to my heart.”

“Well.” The prince of the Sundom squares his shoulders. “I’ll make you tell them to go away.”

“As you wish, your majesty.” Erend drops into a deep bow, earning the giggle he’s aiming for. “Your word is my command.”

“Perhaps not yet,” Nasadi interjects, and steers her son away down the hall. “Not until your studies are done.”

When Erend turns back to Aloy, her expression is soft and inscrutable. “Every time?” she asks quietly, handing him back the words he’d said in the Cut.

“Yeah,” he says. “Him and anyone. All of them. Every single time.”

She nods, eyes narrowed in thought.

He loves her like this - skeptical, wary, fierce. He loves every facet of her, but in choosing to be with him, in choosing this kid and this kid’s idiot father, she’s taken all her insecurities and concerns and forcefully shoved them aside. Every time he thinks about it, it’s like being hit by a Stormbird, the buzz of realization jolting like electric shock though all his nerves at once.

“Always with you,” he adds, and is rewarded by the soft flush of warmth to her cheeks.

Avad greets them with open arms and a kiss on each cheek, Talanah grinning alongside. “My friends,” Avad says with relief. “They told me you’d been seen at Morning’s Light, and I’ve been anxiously checking the gates ever since. I want to know everything.”

There are the bare facts - the Daemonism and HEPHAESTUS, the volcano and CYAN - and at the end, Avad breathes, “I knew the Ancients had unimaginable power, but to control a volcano?”

Talanah snorts. “How is that any different from anything else we’ve seen?”

There are details to be discussed. So far, the baubles around the city have been working without issue, although any passing herd of Chargers or Striders will invariably lose its Watcher if it gets too close.

“I _think_ the baubles will continue to work,” Aloy says. “We aren’t hijacking anything. We’re just using HEPHAESTUS’s own code against it.”

“Perhaps a contingency is still warranted,” Marad interjects.

She scowls. “I didn’t say we didn’t need a contingency. I _said_ I think they’ll hold the line.”

The baubles might continue to work, but even if they do, the Derangement will still escalate. She can cover the entire Sundom in baubles, but in the end, Aloy is the only person who will ever be able to truly resolve the conflict, and Erend knows her too well to think she’ll settle back and watch.

He wanted the cozy farmhouse, the bright hearth and the family cuddled around it, but his family is here, his impossible wife and the child she carries. She refuses to escape the storm raging around her, so so will he.

Eventually, Marad excuses himself to attend other business when it’s Avad and Talanah’s turn to catch them up on news in the Sundom. A meal is brought, simple meats and grains easily palatable in the sultry afternoon heat.

When the final course is over and they’re nibbling on morsels of fruit, Avad glances at Talanah and leans forward. “My friends,” he says, “there are not two faces in this world that bring me more joy to see, but I must beg your forgiveness. We’ve spent this time talking nothing but politics, when perhaps there is news of your own.” His eyes drop significantly down to the bracelet on Erend’s wrist.

Talanah is suddenly still, a keen gleam in her eyes. Of course Avad would understand - he liberated not just Carja and Oseram when he defeated his father - and as his queen, Talanah’s equally well-educated.

“Yeah,” Erend says, twisting the bracelet and looking over at Aloy, who sucks her teeth and tries and fails not to look terribly pleased with herself.

“My sincerest congratulations,” Avad says.

“There’s else something you should know.” Aloy lets out a breath. “I’m pregnant.”

There’s the pause of inhaled breath and then Talanah lets out an undignified squeal, launching out of her chair to pull Aloy up into a fierce hug.

Later, when Talanah and Aloy are deep in discussion about sourcing bauble parts, Avad pulls Erend aside, reaching out to clasp Erend’s hands in his own. “My friend,” he says quietly. “If it’s something you’d accept, I...would like very much if our children could consider themselves cousins.”

 _The way they could have been_ echoes between them unsaid, an imperfect future returned to its crucible. Ersa would never have been queen, and he honestly can’t picture his sister holding a child.  _I was the only kid you ever raised_ , he thinks, _and look how I turned out_.  

Once, Avad stood in front of Erend and gave him an ultimatum. Now, the man who might have been his brother-in-law is here with eyes soft with honest joy. 

It’s too much. Erend ducks his head. “Thanks. That...means a lot. I’m not the man I was-”

“Yes, you are,” Avad says. “You’ve always been what Ersa believed you to be. The only difference is that now you believe it for yourself.”

There’s a long moment of self-conscious silence, and then the words come on their own: “It was Itamen.”

Avad cocks his head. “How so?”

“He- he’s a good kid. He’s a really good kid, and I...it never occurred to me before.” Erend takes a breath. “I’d never wanted a family that way, and I just…” He shakes his head. “He’s a really good kid.”

Avad nods in agreement. “My brother is exceptional for what’s he’s been through, and who he’s becoming. Your child will also be exceptional,” he adds gently. “Just like their parents.”

Exceptional means so many things. Erend is exceptional of his clan, the last leaf on a diseased tree. He’s always assumed his line would die with him, but now there’s this kid, this brilliant, unexpected _kid_ , and Erend is scared to his bones. “Kid’s got a lot to overcome.”

“We are not our fathers,” Avad reminds him. He looks over his shoulder at the women across the room: Aloy has her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with laughter as Talanah pantomimes a recent pratfall of some hapless noble during a hunt. He turns back to Erend, a wry smile playing about his lips. “We are our own men through are own work, but we are made better by those who surround us.”

Erend thinks about Ersa. She’d taken Avad and somehow when Erend wasn’t looking helped a formidable king forge himself from a weak, disgraced son.   

 _Tried to do the same thing with you, idiot_ , he hears her say. _Got myself killed, but you managed it anyway._

 _I wish you could be here to see this_ , he tells her. _You should be here for this_.

 _Nah_ , she says. _This isn’t my place. It never was._

 

****

 

Predictably, Aloy tolerates the loose Carja caftan for a handful of days before she finally snaps. “I can’t do a damn thing without getting caught up in my sleeves,” she growls. “This stupid thing is _impossible_.”

The result is a return to her usual Nora leathers, but with comfort comes another issue. In the last few days, it seems like she’s popped, her belly suddenly undeniable. She spends an hour trying various ways of tying her belt, but eventually flops down on the couch beside him in a huff. “It’s no use. Everyone’s going to know.”

He pauses, looking up from where he’s oiling his freshly-patched gambeson. “If you’re not okay with this-”

“I _am_ ,” she says fiercely. “It’s just that people stare, Erend. Everywhere I go, they stare. Nora, Banuk, Carja, all of them. This-” she gestures to her stomach, “is _mine_. This is you and me and no one else.”

“I’ll punch them,” he offers.

She sighs and rubs her belly. “Everyone’s going to know eventually.” She looks at him sideways. “Unless _they_ already know.”

“They’re damn good at figuring things out.”

“I want half.”

Despite himself, he laughs. He knows better than to bet against his own men. “I’ll see what I can do.”

 

****

 

There’s a quiet moment, him and his top lieutenants. Adar casually sharpens a blade while Tandin works out some sums on a slate. Kip drips oil into his metal hand, occasionally wiping away the excess with a soft cloth. Garvehl is frowning at a patrol map, tapping various points as he modified the watch schedule.

“So,” Tandin says seriously. “The Cut.”

Erend takes a breath, but he doesn’t know where to start, and his silence is suddenly more telling than any words.

The demeanor of his men changes, their bodies going still and alert. Adar’s hand goes still, Tandin sits up and Kip leans forward. “Cap?” Tandin repeats quietly.

“It was a lot,” Erend says. He isn’t good with words, and there aren’t words for this. He woke up last night on fire again, and it took a lot of restless pacing before he was able to go back to bed.

He starts with Daemonism. They knew it was the mission and they’re eager for news, even if he can’t explain the details. He can’t tell them everything, but it’s still enough to make their faces go grave.

“And, um.” He looks down at his hands and the blue beads encircling his wrist. “Look, I don’t know what pool you’re running, but we got married.”

Kip inhales sharply, and dammit, he’s won _again_. “That’s...very interesting.”

Tandin raises an eyebrow. “How’d that happen?”

“It took some convincing.” He takes a breath. “The baby made it easier.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then Kip suddenly punches Garvehl’s shoulder hard enough to knock him off the bench. “I knew it!” he crows. “I _knew_ it.”

“You don’t know anything,” Erend retorts, but any heat is lost in the crack of emotion.

“We are buying you _all_ the drinks,” Kip says fervently. “And then drinking them for you, of course.”

Erend wants to talk. He wants to tell them everything that’s happening in his chest. He wants to explain the hearth and the _hope_ and he wants them all to know that he isn’t his father and that he’s absolutely going to do better, but it’s all caught in the hot swell of his throat.

“Look at you, Cap,” Tandin says, clapping a hand on Erend’s shoulder.

“You realize what this means,” Garvehl says seriously. “This kid just got thirty uncles. And, um. Three aunts.”

Erend is not going to cry. He’s _not_.

“Aw, Cap,” Kip says, definitely not shiny-eyed himself. “Don’t do that. You start and then we _all_ start, and the steely image of the Vanguard is ruined.”

When the rest of them are gone, Adar comes up. “I almost had a child,” he says quietly. “It was Elga’s last month. We were so close, and then she got taken by the Carja.”

Erend’s guts go cold. There’s so much he doesn’t know about Adar. He’s always been gruff and terse. He followed Ersa without question but never engaged with the other soldiers, especially not the ones who drank away the pressure. If Adar’s wife were still alive, everyone would know. Adar might not even be the taciturn man he’s always been.

Everything makes sense. They’d all lost people to the Red Raids, but he suddenly understands _exactly_ why Adar was so angry. Lives were on the line, and even when Ersa was taken, Erend was more concerned with his next bottle. Of course he wouldn’t have been Adar’s favorite.

He hates himself for that. He’s got enough distance now that he can see how completely he’d shut himself down. He hadn’t known how to function without Ersa, so he just...hadn’t. He’d fallen in line with the other freebooters because he’d had nowhere else to go, and he’d let himself drown in Charming Oaf.

He’s not that boy anymore. He’s captain of the Vanguard, protector of the good man who is the Sunking. He’s a husband and a father. The only thing that would be worse than losing Aloy would be losing the baby too, and he wants to be sick. “I’m sorry,” he croaks. “I’m so sorry.”

“It changes everything,” Adar says. “And you change with it.”

“I’m going to do better,” Erend says fiercely. “I’m going to _be_ better. I’m not the stupid kid I was, and I swear on the forge, I’ll be better.”

“I’m not worried,” says the man who once looked at him with utter disdain. “You already are.”

 

****

 

He’s still tired. He wonders if it’s because he’s getting older - he’s not _that_ old - or if it’s just three months of cold and fear finally getting their due. He finds himself nodding off midday, so he goes home to bury himself in the blankets beside Aloy. If he keeps his eyes closed, he can just concentrate on the smell of her skin, the warmth of her hair and the swell of their child.

Sleep is a luxury. Time is a luxury. HEPHAESTUS is out there somewhere, its untethered mind searching, connecting, looking for Aloy.

It knows who she is. She made herself a huge, shining presence when she purged it from CYAN, and it’s seen her through a thousand machine eyes. Maybe it will continue on in its inexorable escalation, sweeping her up as one death among thousands, or maybe it’s already made a hunter-killer for her specific scent.

Eclipse had been a few hundred Carja rebels and whatever machines they could slave to HADES’s network. The rest of the machines are already connected to HEPHAESTUS in one way or another, and they are uncountable and limitless.

Piles of plating and circuits rising up in the center of the room, bundles of wire spreading out like cobwebs. Aloy busies herself with a new bauble design, edging as close to the power tolerances as she can.

He’s not there for the moment she finds the breaking point, but he comes home to the aftermath: scorch marks, hastily-drenched furnishings, and the lingering scent of electrical char.

“Everything’s fine,” she says sharply.

He raises his eyebrows, noticing she’s missing half her own. “I didn’t even ask.”

She finally gets the power level right and the bauble lights up like the sun. Even from the top of the city wall, it makes the Snapmaws squirm and swim away, and a day trip to the canyonlands reveals Ravagers and Scrappers react the same way.

“I wasn’t sure the radius would be so wide,” she says, pleased.

Once, he’d been alarmed at this device and awestruck by her ingenuity, but all he feels is the hard press of time. It occurs to him that _she’s_ always felt this way: every moment of passing moment of triumph is just a moment to brace against another heavy hammerfall. “That’s a lot of power.”

She chews thoughtfully on a twist of hair. “Tallnecks,” she finally says.

“I thought we’d already decided-”

“We don’t have a choice. I can’t build a bauble for every thousand feet of the Sundom, and I need the bauble’s influence to spread on its own. Besides, to keep this one constantly running, I’d need a Glinthawk array the size of a house, and that’s a _lot_ of Glinthawks.”

“The Tallnecks?”

She sighs. “I think we have to, and I need to do it before I get too big to climb.”

“ _No_ -”

“No one else knows how to connect it,” she snaps. “Do you?”

“I built a bauble-”

She folds her arms across her chest. “And when was the last time you climbed a hundred feet into the air?”

He’s struggling to find an argument and failing. “Someone else…?”

“Not unless they can fly.”

Tracker of killers, master of machines. The impossible woman in front of him is the only person crazy enough to even try, and he’s helpless to do anything but give her a heft up. “If anyone could fly, it’d be you.”

She rolls her eyes.

They face a choice: build a bauble on the ground and haul it up, or take the components separately and assemble it in place. Building it on the ground means being able to test it, but it’ll be unwieldy and easily damaged if it swings too far during its lift. Assembling it in place means she can secure each piece to the Tallneck’s wide crown, but if something goes wrong, it’ll be difficult to repair.

Further complicating matters, the radar has to be from a Thunderjaw. As far as she knows, the Tallneck can amplify a signal, but if there signal isn’t strong enough, it just won’t work.

“Those things are massive,” Erend points out. “It’ll take ten men just to haul it.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she snaps back. “I don’t want to get up there and find out a Scrapper isn’t enough.”

“Will there be power?”

“I _hope_ so.”

He scrubs a hand across his face. There are too many unknowns, but she’s right: if nothing else, this could buy her enough time to track down HEPHAESTUS itself. If they can’t find HEPHAESTUS, they have no hope of rebuilding GAIA and calming whatever unknown dysfunction affects the other subroutines.

Then there’s the baby. There are times when the odds seem so overwhelming that he’s terrified that Sylens was right, and that this little family they’re making is only slowing her down. It’s selfish to want this family, but then he sees her absently rub her belly when she’s deep in thought, and certainty flares hot and bright in his chest. Aloy was right when she’d staked her claim in the Cut. She’s refused to be the sacrificial boar from the very beginning, and without her, he’d have let himself be given to the smelter long ago.

Elisabet was calm and calculated, he thinks. From the little he’s seen, she seems like she’d gathered her information, considered it carefully, and then laid out a solution with forthright precision. Aloy is nothing like that: she’s messy, a firestorm of information and intent. She finds answers before she knows what questions to ask, and she bloodies herself along the way. She keeps nothing in reserve. There’s a difference between being patient and waiting: Aloy is a competent hunter, but even when she’s still, she’s looking for the next target. She’s fought hard for every mouthful, every breath, every inch of space to claim, and this is nothing different.

At the end of the day, despite their differences, he knows Elisabet and Aloy have contingencies for the same reason: if they don’t, the world dies.

“You’re staring,” Aloy says, her eyes piercing him across the room.

“I love you,” he says, because he’s a moth and he will always, always follow her into the hottest part of the flame.


	88. Chapter 88

Talanah somehow convinces Aloy to let the Hunter’s Lodge find a Thunderjaw, and at the behest of their Sunhawk and her Thrush, almost the entire Lodge empties into the Gatelands. Less than a week later, they come back bearing their impressive quarry. Only one of the massive power cells survived the hunt, but it’s better than nothing.

Even if it weren’t being slowly consumed by machine parts, there isn’t room in the apartment for a Thunderjaw radar and its constituent parts. Aloy grudgingly accepts a larger workshop near the palace library, but within two days, she’s all but sleeping there. She’s acquired a small army of scholars and tinkerers, and Erend is somehow her lieutenant.

Once, he was brute force and solid muscle, a weapon waiting for a target and a target waiting for a blow. He’d been a useless drunk with a dead sister and no hope, trapped in a bottle and pickling in his own shame. He’d been trapped in his own head, _I love you_ and _marry me_ caught in an endless loop. Now, he stands before his wife as she matter-of-factly slings information from her Focus to his own. “I need your eyes,” she says.

Not only does she trust him to posses the greatest, most fearsome secrets of the world, she trusts him to _read_ them. The entire world _died_ for these secrets, and an impossible woman is handing them to him and asking for his assessment.

He thinks of the Grave Hoard, of Zero Dawn, of the months and months of deception and lies. The entire Sundom sees the effects of the Derangement, but only a handful of scholars know about HEPHAESTUS.

 _Here we are again_ , he thinks. _Ore to iron to rust._ Aloy is adamant the Thunderjaw radar won’t stop the Derangement; it just buys her time. It buys all three of them time. “I love you,” he says, the light from the Focus splashed across his vision.

Her face goes soft for a moment, and she leans through the blue-flicker-pink to kiss him.

  


****

 

On the stone floor of the workshop, she’s chalked out three words: _Tools, Locations_ and _Resources_ , and there are scribbles in various handwriting around each. Assistants bring books and scrolls from the deepest parts of the library. “I don’t have time to read that,” Aloy tells one of the scholars. “Find me the relevant parts. Make me notes.”

“Why can’t they all have Focuses?” Erend asks in a quiet aside.

She huffs and stalks away, the answer in her silence. Even two years later, no one can say for certain that Eclipse has been completely destroyed, and even if they were, there are still others who have figured out how to use the radars to their advantage. Dervahl created his lure without a Focus, and in the Cut, there were stories of raiders using bauble-like units to scan for potential adversaries. If Erend could build his own bauble barely knowing how to read its diagram, one skilled engineer with their own Focus could easily turn every bauble from here to Sunfall into a lure and bringing down complete annihilation. It’s an risk for Aloy to even share the diagrams themselves, but she’s Aloy and they provide protection, so of course she did.

The Thunderjaw radar is a _massive_ risk. She’s thrown herself into its construction, and he’s absolutely sure she’s fully conscious of the consequences if it goes wrong. It’s bigger and stronger than ten baubles put together, and even a second of inattention could mean disaster. She doesn’t like being a gatekeeper to the knowledge of the Ancients, but right now, she doesn’t have a choice. Not when HEPHAESTUS could be watching her through a thousand machine eyes. The only person who could possibly guess is silent; Erend has woken up in the middle of the night a dozen times to hear her hissing epithets into her Focus downstairs, railing at the absence of her mysterious partner.

It’s only a matter of time before they actually have that fight, but he’s helpless to stop. He slips once, the barest comment about Sylens’s technical knowledge, and immediately she slams her fists down on the table and whirls on him. “No, Erend, I _can’t_ just learn it, and even if I could, we don’t have the kind of time Sylens did. There were ten years between the first Sawtooth and the first Thunderjaw. You saw what the Daemon did in the Cut. Who knows where they’re building the next Cauldron? Who knows what’s going to come out?” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “I’m not Sylens. I’m not Elisabet.”

“Elisabet wasn’t omniscient,” he says.

“She had more training-”

“You’re just as smart.”

“Smart isn’t _enough_ ,” she growls. “Not when there’s so much at stake.”

She isn’t Elisabet, and the more he reads of Elisabet’s journals, the more he learns about Zero Dawn from the people who created it, the more uneasy he feels. At the end of the world, Elisabet was _ruthless_. She’d kidnapped people to further Zero Dawn’s own end, and the price for their noncompliance was death. She’d been complicit in the slaughter of her entire species. As much as he hates it, he can’t help but see the parallel between Elisabet and Mad King Jiran: there had been a sudden and grave threat, and their attempt to stop the escalation was to throw lives at it.

From what he’s read, Elisabet was a master of her craft, but some part of him hates that she’d looked at at what Ted Faro did and immediately accepted the death of her world. She’d been more than brilliant, building machines of her own long before the swarm loosed itself. Aloy took Dervahl’s sadistic technology and drove herself to exhaustion turning it into peace. Some part of Erend is furious that Elisabet didn’t even _try_.

Right now, regardless of how the Metal World died and who was responsible for forging the axe that killed it, Aloy is the one standing in front of him. She might have been formed from Elisabet’s body, but she isn’t Elisabet, and that, Erend thinks, is what’s going to make the difference.

She hadn’t had time - she _really_ hadn’t had time - but when Erend was drowning, Aloy stopped and drew the truth from bare dirt. She hadn’t blinked. He’d asked and she’d helped, and the more he reads, he isn’t sure Elisabet would have done the same thing.

 

****

 

In the meantime, there’s this life that’s taken residence between them. It becomes real without warning, swooping out of the sun to blind them both. It’s late, far past dark, when Aloy abruptly straightens, a bundle of wire dropping to the floor as one hand goes to her side. He’s frozen, suddenly terrified something is wrong, and then she blinks, unaccountably dazed. “It’s...Erend, I can _feel_ it.”

“What?”

“Here, you feel.”

She presses his hand to a spot just below her navel, but there’s nothing under his fingers. “I don’t-”

“It’s there,” she insists. “It’s...like a bee.”

“ _Stinging_?”

“No, idiot. Just...small. Bumbling.” When she looks back up at him, her face is radiant, her hair wild and bright in the lamplight, and it’s the first time he’s seen her smile in days. “This is- Erend, this is actually happening.”

He’s been thinking a lot about Ersa lately, about the body that wasn’t hers and the hunt that happened after. When he walks around the streets, he thumbs his Focus and watches people ghost around him, their bodies a slow blue glow as they move through the market. He stares at the hard-packed dust of the Vanguard practice ground and traces the bootprints of his men as they spar.

Aloy sees things he can’t. She takes a bare handful of evidence and forges certainty. There’s only smooth, warm skin beneath his palm, but he doesn’t have to feel the baby’s kick to lose himself in the impossible crush of everything his life has become.

 

****

 

Two days later, he’s scrawling the afternoon’s notes into his ledger when Ullar tentatively steps up. “I’m gonna break rank for a minute.”

Erend raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

It comes out in a rush. “Me and Nelehn were talking, and we’ve got Em now and she’s a handful all on her own, but then Nel made the point that neither of you have much family in the city.”

“And…?”

“So there’s no one to show you how to take care of a baby.”

“Well, we…” Erend stops to think, suddenly encased in ice, and then slowly allows, “...no.”

“Nel said to come over sometime and have a meal with us, and maybe...sorry, Cap, but I don’t need Kip’s luck to bet all my shards on you not knowing how to change a diaper.”

It’s the truth. He’s honestly not thought about it, and the enormity of what he’s honestly not thought about abruptly crashes down on his shoulders.

It must show in his face, because Ullar makes a sympathetic noise. “Sometimes it feels like Nel’s related to half this damn city, but I swear, I’d be lost without them. Me, I was the baby in a hundred cousins. I had no idea what to do with Em. Still mostly don’t.” He looks down at his feet, then back up at Erend. “You said we’re all family, right? So this is a family thing.”

“Thanks,” Erend says weakly. “I just...thanks.”

 

****

 

Aloy grew up outside her clan. She didn’t have anyone but Rost, and she had him right until he left her at the village gates. Every time she's tried to settle down, the world lashed out and left her bloody and stunned, and every time she’s quelled a threat, an even greater one rises up in its place. Solitude clings to everything she does, decades of abuse masquerading as rationality, and she fights it every single day.

Somehow, she and Erend have both fought beyond who they’ve been and fiercely committed themselves to each other and this future they’re building. Those big, sweeping proclamations - he’s never thought those would be the easiest part, but somehow, the little tedium of life is the harder challenge.

Diapers didn’t occur to him. It didn’t occur to Aloy, either, and when he relays the message, she goes white and then bright red. “Are you _kidding_ me,” she demands, her voice flanging up an octave, her knuckles going bloodless around a sparker. They’ve both been staggering under the weight of HEPHAESTUS for so long that something as visceral and human as wiping their kid’s shit is suddenly overwhelming in its simplicity.  

“Yeah.” Aloy swallows, nodding once. “That would- that’ll probably be...good.”

It turns out to be just what they need. Erend knows Ullar’s wife only in passing - he knows he’d been there for the wedding, but it was a celebration and he’d _definitely_ been celebrating - but she’s sweet and forthright. Aloy, for her part, falls mostly silent and just lets herself be taught. He can see the old Nora longing swirl around her, distant and sad, but she squares her shoulders and lets Nelehn talk.

Himself, he’s delirious with information, _we’re having a baby we’re having a baby_ throbbing with every heartbeat, but he’s mostly okay right up until Nelehn grins and suddenly Emaddu is in his arms, soft and solid, and his brain stops working entirely.

Distantly, he hears Nelehn nudge Aloy. “Look at his face,” she says fondly. “That’s how you know you’ve got a good man.”

 

****

 

Like an opened floodgate, Vanguard dad advice starts coming from all sides. When he stops by to offer an outgrown cradle, Alber just happens to have Annat riding on his shoulders and Timor carefully toddling alongside. Beggerd has a friend in the Carja garrison who has a newborn, and the friend pays a visit, baby in tow, to casually remark on the infant’s soft head and the ways its body needs to be supported. A tome on child rearing appears on Erend’s desk, but no one will fess up to having left it there.

He can’t even pretend he’s not ravenous. He reads it cover to cover, stumbling over unfamiliar words, and then reads it again just to make sure he hasn’t missed anything. A couple of days later, he finds it tucked amid Aloy’s tools, a coil of wire marking her own progress.

He has no idea how childbirth is in the Claim. He’s pretty sure the Nora have specific rituals they perform with the same slavering obsession they do any aspect of motherhood; he pictures a ring of sisters, mothers, aunts and grandmothers crowding close in a crush of knowledge and support. He can’t see Aloy in the middle of that, even if her tribe hadn’t cast her out. He tries to imagine his mother the same way, surrounded by clan and kin, but like everything else about her these days, she’s an indistinct blur he can’t seem to resolve.

He can’t imagine his father involved in any of it. Anything that might have been a tender moment is just carbon folded into unyielding iron.

But...that’s his past. Now, there’s Aloy, bright and fierce as she drags him up into her light. There’s the remembered warmth of Emaddu’s dense little body against his chest and Itamen’s unselfconscious demand for his time.

Erend isn’t his father’s son. He’s afraid - he’s _so_ afraid - but his lungs swell with an emotion too deep to be called love and fierce to be called joy.

 

****

 

The work continues. The Thunderjaw radar is bigger than a Scrapper’s, and a hundred times more complicated. The single power cell is almost the size of an adult human and impossibly heavy. Even disconnected, even functionally dead, residual energy hides in the radar’s wires, arcing out from unknown connections. The first time it happens, it knocks Aloy on her ass, and she spends the rest of the day white and clenched, one hand constantly seeking reassurance in the healthy little flutter of the baby.

“Should have seen that coming,” she mutters as Erend fusses over her. “Should have been wearing sparkworker gear. I know better.”

It’s impossible to tell if the radar is damaged. She spends hours sitting on the ground in front of it, deep in her Focus. It’s like trying to piece together a shattered pot without not knowing which shards are missing. She finally dumps what she has into his Focus. “I have it sorted,” she says. “Maybe you can see something I can’t.”

What he sees is nothing. There are more questions than answers, and the holes don’t even create a clear picture of what’s missing. She draws diagrams on the floor and spends hours arguing with the scholars. The scholars don’t necessarily understand the technology, but the Oseram know sparks and the Carja know light, and anything is better than her locked in a room alone, trying to untangle these knots by herself.

The radar is also _much_ bigger than anticipated, and it doesn’t look like it can be broken down into its constituent parts. Scrappers are simple, one of the first machines to come from a Cauldron. There are references to them going back to the oldest Carja records. From there, it's a steady evolution, Scrappers to Ravagers to Thunderjaws. After much consideration, Aloy had initially dismissed harvesting a radar from a Ravager; If a machine had to be killed, it had to be the biggest one. If the Ravager proved too underpowered for what she wanted, they’d have had to get a Thunderjaw anyway. Every kill is another possible escalation, and she wants to make every kill count.

Days pass. Aloy prods and growls. She’s making a little progress, and there’s a ring of lights that hint at some semblance of user control. Erend walks his patrols with fire at the edge of his vision, every shadow a potential Scorcher. He sits with Itamen and tries to breathe, the future clawing at his heart. At night, he brings Aloy food and gently drags her back home. She sleeps like the dead until first light, and is immediately back in her workshop. The world is falling apart and they're having a baby, and it's all so much that he has to take a moment where he can and just breathe deeply into the bright blaze of her hair. 

 

****

 

Then, there’s a bad night.

He’s sound asleep when she hits him, waking him with something more feral and abrupt than a scream, and then she’s on her knees by the side of the bed, breathing in unsteady gulps with her forehead pressed against the mattress.

His pulse is suddenly throbbing in his vision. “What is it?” She doesn’t answer, and his heart lodges in his throat. “Aloy, please.”

Finally, she croaks out, “I can’t do it.”

“Can’t do what?”

She takes another shuddery breath, not lifting her head. “I can’t, Erend, I can’t-”

“Talk to me. Tell me.”

“I can’t climb it,” she whispers. “I can’t.”

 _Oh_. The Tallneck rears up in his mind, a loose collection of unstable plate, and then without thinking he’s off the bed to curl around her. “You don’t have to.”

“I _fell_ ,” she goes on, oblivious. “I was almost there, but I kept missing handholds, I kept _missing_ , and then there was nothing but open air, and the _baby_ -” She turns a tearstained face up to him. “The world’s going to die, Erend, but I want this baby, and I _can’t_ -”

Elisabet stood in front of the apocalypse and laid herself down. He can see her face, petals collected beneath the ephemeral memorial like fallen roof tiles. There’d been no discussion. She’d made her decision and martyred herself without considering an alternative.

He can’t say it’s okay for the world to end. He can’t consign the world and everything in it to death just because he wants a kid, and he _knows_ that’s what Aloy’s thinking.

It feels like a black-and-white choice, the world or this kid, and Elisabet would have looked at the odds and chosen without hesitation. He and Aloy can’t. This is what they have.

He’s suddenly furious at Elisabet for setting such a stark precedent, but all he can do is wrap himself around his wife and quietly rock her in the darkness.

 

****

 

She doesn’t say anything for two days. She buries herself in her Focus, barely coming out to eat. When she finally does, she’s wearing the same heavy weariness he’d seen after the Embrace.

“Well?” he prompts gently.

Aloy shakes her head. “Let's walk.”

They find themselves up on the watchtower. The valley is heavy with dry haze, dust blown in from the Gatelands hanging still in the breathless air. The river is a languid trickle, glimmering in the heat.

“The Spire,” she finally says. “It’s the only option.”

The Spire. It’s something that exists, a fixture on the horizon like the mountains beyond, but so much blood was lost there even thinking about it tastes like iron and cordite. He doesn’t have Aloy’s technical acumen, nor the larger context that makes the terminology more comprehensible, but he tries.

“MINERVA...shut down the swarm.” The swarm was locked in such a way that picking it required delicate, persistent precision, and the human race didn’t survive long enough to see the lock opened. He understands locks. He understands the broadcast, a thousand lockpicks sent out like sunlight. “HADES wanted to use the Spire to activate all the machines. ”

“Tallnecks generate their own power,” she says. “Eclipse used Tallnecks to boost their Focus network. I saw them do it. I _know_ using the Tallnecks to amplify the baubles will work.” She looks down, then back up at him. “I don’t know how the Derangement affects MINERVA.”

She doesn’t want to risk finishing the job HADES set out to accomplish. The Daemon stayed in machines long after she’d purged it from its Cauldron; it would be nothing for Corruption to linger, the last of HADES’s voice echoing across the world.

He has to ask, and he hates himself for it. “What if we just...don’t?” Once, he’d been desperate to take her and hide away as the world burned, but now, he’s invested. She'll never run, so neither will he. There’s something like Itamen’s grin and Emaddi’s warm little body, and it’s happening, it’s _happening_ , but he can see the quiet hearth slowly receding like the memory of his mother’s face.

They’re going to keep fighting. There’s no way they won’t. Whatever parts of normal life will be furtive and precious. She married him in between storms; that’s how they’ll raise this kid.

Aloy doesn’t say anything for a long time, one hand tucked under her belly, and he knows she’s thinking about it. “You know I can’t,” she says quietly.

He reaches for her other hand, edging close to press his face into the wild blaze of her hair. Yeah, he knows. He knows.


End file.
